European Police Forces And Law Enforcement In The First World War 3030261018, 9783030261016, 9783030261023

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements......Page 6
Prolegomena......Page 7
Contents......Page 16
Notes on Contributors......Page 20
List of Figures......Page 25
List of Tables......Page 26
Chapter 1 Policing in Wartime: Without Any Disruption? General Introduction......Page 27
Part I Police Forces at the Front......Page 40
Chapter 2 Bobbies in Khaki: The British Military Police in the First World War......Page 41
Expansion and Duties......Page 43
Civilian Offences......Page 48
Bobbies and Redcaps: A Contrast in Style or of Type?......Page 54
Chapter 3 Was There a “Lotharingian Axis”? Belgian, French, and Italian Military Policing During the First World War: A Study in Comparative History......Page 57
Sister Institutions?......Page 58
Three Gendarmerie Forces at War......Page 59
Sharply Contrasting Images......Page 62
Conclusions......Page 65
Chapter 4 Tracking the ‘Enemy Within’: Alcoholisation of the Troops, Excesses in Military Order and the French Gendarmerie During the First World War......Page 69
Wines and Spirits at the Heart of the Poilu’s Daily Routine......Page 71
All Kinds of Excesses......Page 73
A Protean Anti-Alcoholic Discourse......Page 74
Military Authorities at Work......Page 76
A Function with Distinct Levels of Action......Page 78
Impaired Relations and Assaults......Page 81
Conclusions......Page 83
Chapter 5 Carabinieri Pilots and Italian Military Aviation During the First World War......Page 89
The Carabinieri at the Heart of a New Weapon: Aviation......Page 90
The Profiles and Careers of Men Motivated by a Type of Enlistment Hitherto Unknown......Page 92
Conclusions......Page 94
Chapter 6 A War-time Secret Police: Activities of the Geheime Feldpolizei on the Western Front During the First World War......Page 98
Preparation and Improvisation on the Eve of War......Page 99
The GFP’s Activities with GHQ and Various Army Corps......Page 100
A Gradually Increased Capacity......Page 101
Far-Reaching Missions......Page 102
Dismantling Allied Networks......Page 103
Distinguished Success......Page 105
Evident Failures......Page 106
“French Agents” and a Lack of Zeal Within the GFP......Page 107
Conclusions......Page 108
Chapter 7 Disarmed and Captive: Greek Gendarmes in Görlitz......Page 112
Capture......Page 114
Life as Guests of the Kaiser......Page 116
Homecoming and a Damaged Reputation......Page 118
Part II Police Forces on the Home Front......Page 126
Introduction......Page 127
Matching War and Police Duties......Page 128
Staffing Levels......Page 129
Enlisting Women......Page 132
Small Towns: Unlimited Multitasking for Mayors......Page 134
Police Work Goes on—For War Purposes......Page 137
Chapter 9 The Complex Policing System of Oldenburg, a Middle German State Far Away from the War?......Page 142
Policing Oldenburg at War......Page 144
Created During the War: Naval and Auxiliary Gendarmes......Page 149
Policing Defeated Germany......Page 151
Chapter 10 The Gendarmerie of Luxembourg......Page 161
The Gendarmerie of Luxembourg in the Summer of 1914......Page 162
The Gendarmerie and the Neutrality of Luxembourg......Page 165
The Gendarmerie as Defender of Luxembourg’s Economy......Page 168
Conclusions......Page 172
The General Organisation of Gendarmerie and Police......Page 176
The Military Tasks at the Beginning of the War......Page 178
Further Tasks in War Zones......Page 179
Problems in Interior Areas......Page 180
Chapter 12 The Serbian Gendarmerie’s Involvement in the First World War: From Keeping Order at the Rear to Fighting on the Front Line......Page 187
Traditions and Missions of the Serbian Gendarmerie, 1860–1914......Page 188
From Combat to Dismantling, 1914–1916......Page 192
The Rebirth of Gendarmerie Forces, 1916–1918......Page 195
Part III Policing Far from the War? The Empires and the Neutrals......Page 199
Chapter 13 The Swiss Police Forces and Counter-Intelligence (1914–1918)......Page 200
Conclusions......Page 208
Chapter 14 The Swiss Army Gendarmerie: A Composite Force Facing the Challenges of the First World War......Page 211
Early Stages in the Creation of an “Army Police” (1882–1914)......Page 212
Organisation and Assignments of the Army Gendarmerie......Page 214
Staff Numbers......Page 217
Uniforms and Weaponry......Page 218
Conclusions......Page 220
Chapter 15 Fighting the ‘Enemy Within’: Australian Police and Internal Security in World War I......Page 227
Australia’s Police Forces, 1914......Page 228
Wartime Policing Challenges: Loss of Personnel......Page 230
Wartime Policing Challenges: Controlling Enemy Aliens......Page 231
Wartime Policing Challenges: Managing Political Dissent......Page 232
The Growth of the Security State......Page 235
Conclusion......Page 237
Introduction......Page 243
Historical Background......Page 244
Coercion and Consent......Page 245
Policing Resistance......Page 246
Policing “Loyalism”......Page 250
Conclusions......Page 253
Chapter 17 Police Askaris, Kaiserliche Landespolizisten and Leoleo: The German Colonial Police Forces in 1914–1915......Page 258
German Colonies and Their General Administrative Framework......Page 260
The German Colonial Police System......Page 262
German Police Forces in the First World War: German South-West Africa, Togo and German New Guinea......Page 263
Part IV The Aftermath of the War: Back to Peace-Time Policing......Page 270
The Police Before the War......Page 271
Policing in the War......Page 274
Policing the Revolution......Page 276
Conclusions......Page 279
Chapter 19 Finding a New Balance: The Belgian Security System in the Aftermath of WWI......Page 286
Police Forces and Society in Transition: Challenges, Difficulties and Opportunities......Page 288
Reviewing the Troops of the “New” Police Apparatus......Page 292
Conclusions: From “Suspended Time” to a New Era......Page 298
Chapter 20 A War Without an End: French Gendarmes and the Post-conflict Process (1918–1921)......Page 305
Ending the War and the Challenges of the Armistice......Page 307
Restoring Public Service to Ravaged Areas—With a Definite Lack of Resources......Page 308
Return to Peace and the Management of Civilian Populations......Page 310
Conclusions......Page 313
Chapter 21 “The Penetration of French Ideas”: The Role of the Gendarmerie of Alsace and Lorraine in the Local Rebuilding of French National Identity (1918–1925)......Page 318
Albert Michel’s Strategy......Page 319
Creating an Effective Tool and Keeping Its Control......Page 320
Using All Means Available—Including PT Instructors......Page 323
General Orientations......Page 325
Concrete Ways and Means......Page 327
Conclusions......Page 331
Chapter 22 Parisian Policemen and the Traces of the Great War......Page 334
A Civilian Body with Military Potential......Page 335
Policing a Transformed City at War......Page 336
Provincial Towns......Page 338
A More Brutal Society......Page 339
Material Traces......Page 340
A Different Group......Page 341
A Group Suffering War Trauma—Just Like the Rest of France......Page 342
Chapter 23 Conclusion: Living and Seeing the War Without Immediate Experience......Page 347
Timeline Discrepancies Between Police and Military Action......Page 349
Policing Scales and Standards: Permeable Borders and Blurred Limits of Action Between Front and Rear......Page 350
Rebuilding Law Enforcement Forces in the Various Aftermaths of War......Page 352
General Bibliography......Page 356
Index......Page 376

Citation preview

WORLD HISTORIES OF CRIME, CULTURE AND VIOLENCE

European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War Edited by Jonas Campion · Laurent López Guillaume Payen

World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence Series Editors Marianna Muravyeva University of Helsinki Helsinki, Finland Raisa Maria Toivo Tampere University Tampere, Finland

Palgrave’s World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence seeks to publish research monographs, collections of scholarly essays, multi-authored books, and Palgrave Pivots addressing themes and issues of interdisciplinary histories of crime, criminal justice, criminal policy, culture and violence globally and on a wide chronological scale (from the ancient to the modern period). It focuses on interdisciplinary studies, historically contextualized, across various cultures and spaces employing a wide range of methodologies and conceptual frameworks. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14383

Jonas Campion · Laurent López · Guillaume Payen Editors

European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War

Editors Jonas Campion Institute of Historical Research of Septentrion (UMR CNRS 8529) Lille University Villeneuve-d’Ascq, France

Laurent López Defence Historical Service Vincennes, France

Guillaume Payen Centre d’histoire du XIXe siècle (EA 3550)/Department of History Sorbonne University Paris, France

World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence ISBN 978-3-030-26101-6 ISBN 978-3-030-26102-3  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2019 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Trinity Mirror/Mirrorpix/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Centre de recherche de l’école des officiers de la gendarmerie nationale (Gendarmerie nationale, CREOGN, Melun, France); the Paris-Sorbonne Université (commission recherche de l’université, Centre d’histoire du XIXe siècle, École doctorale 2 histoire moderne et contemporaine); the Institut de Recherches historiques du Septentrion (Irhis), U. Lille; the French Service historique de la défense; the Centre d’histoire du droit et de la justice, UCLouvain; the research programme “Justice and Population” (Interuniversity Attraction Pole P7/22, Belgian State—Belgian Science Policy); the Région Nord-Pas-deCalais (Accueil “Jeunes Chercheurs 2015”). We would like to thank Professor Jean-Noël Luc (Paris-Sorbonne Université) for his long-term help, support and enthusiasm for police and gendarmerie matters. This book is also in part his book. We must thank Floriane Avancès, Maëlle Besson, Alexandre Combralier, Maxime Delaude, Marianne Devillers, Enguerrand Ducourtil, Jean-Gatien Gilbert, Ladislas Latoch, Gabrielle Legourd, François Mathou, Vincent Perrot, Laetitia Plaissy and the history graduate students at the Sorbonne University who assisted with the translation of conference proceedings—a special thanks goes to Mathilde Lepez who worked on three chapters. Among our professional translators, Dr. Jean-Baptiste Picy (Lateral Traductions) provided us with invaluable help in terms of both his talent and commitment—contributing greatly to make this ambitious project possible. v

Prolegomena

We can never know how many people in August 1914 really believed that the war would be over by Christmas. What we do know is that the First World War witnessed the introduction of massive mechanised killing to the battlefield and to home fronts. Many soldiers, and their supplies, travelled to the edge of the front line by railway or petrol-powered vehicles; they dug shelters from which to fight and in which to rest, protected by rolls of mass-produced barbed wire; towards the end of the war some of them began to cross battlefields in armoured, petrol-driven war machines that could rip through the wire and cross over trenches. At sea, men fought from massive armoured warships, as well as from smaller boats that could travel beneath the waves. Soldiers and sailors blasted each other from the ground, from mines under the ground and from the air with mass-produced explosives. The millions involved on the battlefields had to be armed, fed, watered, clothed and treated with medicines, bandages and beds for all forms of battle injury and disease contracted while in uniform. Enforcing order on both the home and battle fronts, and the need to ensure that soldiers and sailors were available to fight and that their supply requirements were met, were tasks for various police organisations, yet in spite of the recent growth of research into the history of gendarmerie and police forces, this area has been sadly under-researched. The essays contained in this collection seek to begin redressing the situation and to encourage further research. A high percentage of the men serving in police institutions have always been relatively young and they have often been recruited from former vii

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soldiers. This had serious consequences when the nations and empires of Europe went to war in 1914. In Prussia, for example, the Kriminalpolizei lost more than half of its senior men when they were called back to the army as reservist officers; and by the end of the war one third of the posts in the Berlin Schutzmannschaft were unfilled.1 Such was even the case in Great Britain which boasted of having a non-military, unarmed, essentially civilian police. The problem was that former soldiers, or sailors, serving in police forces were often reservists and in consequence, the moment that war was declared, these men were recalled to the colours. Similarly, given the patriotic fervour of 1914, where young policemen had not served in the armed forces, very many were determined to volunteer; and when conscription was introduced it became impossible for a young man of military age to join the police. The consequence was that police forces on different home fronts were rapidly reduced in numbers leaving the older men to shoulder the increased burdens occasioned by the war on the home fronts. Indeed, because of the need for men, some police were refused permission to leave after the date arrived for their retirement. At the same time in Britain “Special Constables” were appointed from volunteers to serve for the duration of the war.2 War did not mean an end or suspension of usual peacetime police duties. It was still necessary to investigate crime and to maintain order in the very broadest sense, but there were shifts in both crime and order as a direct result of the conflict.3 From the early months of the war there appeared to be an increase in offending by juveniles which many attributed to the absence of fathers, elder brothers, school teachers and others who might keep young people, especially young males, in check. In Austria and Germany some schools were at least partially requisitioned by the military which added further to the problem by reducing the hours that children and young people spent in the closed, supervised environment of the classroom. At the same time, it was feared that large camps full of young men in uniform would act as a magnet for young girls with the accompanying concerns about an increase in prostitution and the undermining of morality. Whether or not juvenile crime did increase, it became an issue for the depleted ranks of the police. Similarly, the worries about morality extended by the young women in the vicinity of army camps, garrison towns and naval dockyards led to more pressure on the police.4 In Britain some of this pressure was met with the recruitment of women police who were given a major role to play in the supervision of women moving into, and around, military districts.

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The women police in Britain were also required to police young women who entered paid work, with opportunities to work greatly expanding for women during the war, most notably in burgeoning munitions factories. Women police had to search female munitions workers before they entered workshops in the morning to ensure that they carried nothing flammable, incendiary or likely to cause a spark and hence an explosion. At the end of the day they made similar searches to check that nothing was being smuggled out of the factory that could be used or sold-on for profit. Occasionally they had to deal with strikes and disorders among women workers. But in the same way that women workers sometimes felt that management was taking advantage or introducing silly, pettifogging rules and regulations, so many of the women police felt that they were patronised by their male colleagues, not least because they were not sworn in as official police officers. In order to make an arrest a women police constable had to call on a sworn male constable; moreover, since women police officers were not sworn in as officers of the law, any physical assault received was only the equivalent of an assault on an ordinary civilian. The maximum penalty for assaulting a male police officer was up to six months hard labour. The act of assaulting a women police officer, being no more than the equivalent of a Common Law assault on a civilian, carried the maximum penalty of a month in prison.5 War led to new legislation and new regulations for the home fronts that had to be enforced by the depleted, aging police institutions. Supervising blackout regulations when air raids threatened and watching for spies were just two of the most obvious wartime tasks; in the British experience the instances of the former far outnumbered finding any of the latter, but it did not stop men trying. The shortage of food and other necessaries, together with the opportunity for profiting from the appropriation of different kinds of military supplies, such as clothing, footwear, medical supplies, soap, razor blades and bed-linen, led to an increase in the illicit economy. Across the combatant countries this expansion of illicit buying and selling became popularly known as the black market, le marché noir, der schwarzer Markt. Moreover, when supplies both legal and illicit gave out, the police found themselves having to deal with angry and frustrated crowds and at times this could mean persuading the owners of shops and market stalls to sell every marketable foodstuff they had.6 It also meant that the police might act with discretion, turning a blind eye to the activities of black marketeers, or to an angry population that mistreated fraudsters who appeared to be profiting unfairly.

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Such was the case in the Habsburg Empire with the supposedly dependable Austrian gendarmes; and German military commanders in occupied Belgium were known to reject the appeals of smugglers for assistance when they were violently assaulted by Belgian crowds, even though the beneficiary of such activity was Germany.7 Once rationing was introduced, as it was across combatant countries, the police had to keep a watch for food hoarders. They were also expected to prevent hungry city dwellers invading farmers’ fields in search of food stuffs—something that appears to have been a particular problem in wartime Germany. Rioting and disorder were always issues for the police to deal with, but war added a new dimension. In Britain there were riots directed at German shops and tradesmen; it was enough that an individual, a shop or restaurant had a German name for mischief makers to assemble, with hangers-on, and attack people or property. Pacifists and conscientious objectors were also the objects of popular hostility, and so too were workers that went on strike and sometimes even men who were returned from the front because their skills were needed at home; amongst the ultra-patriots the latter were indistinguishable from shirkers. Reluctantly, the police were required to check that the wives of serving soldiers or sailors were not spending the whole of their separation allowance on drink, and that war widows were not co-habiting with other men, thus making them ineligible for a widow’s pension. The expansion of the tasks of the aging, depleted police workforce in England, together with the loss of their weekly rest day, fostered discontent and the growth of a police union; in August 1918 the police in London went on strike. The government caved in immediately with a succession of concessions and promises, but it was also resolved to break the police union. It did so, successfully, a year later when the police struck work for a second time.8 There were some policing duties directly related to the war effort, most notably the pursuit of deserters and draft dodgers. In such instances the police on the home front were commonly assisted by, or worked closely with, police specifically attached to the armed forces. Some police institutions spanned the army and the civilian world, such as the various forms of gendarmerie corps. In Britain there was no such force, but the civilian police worked alongside the Military Police. This was particularly necessary since the Military Police had no jurisdiction over civilians and could only arrest men on the home front who were wearing military uniforms or who were clearly identifiable as military offenders.

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The various forms of military police were also present in military camps and in front line areas. They undertook the duties of police on the home front, seeking out those suspected of committing conventional crimes, although the ordinary soldiers, and sometimes their officers too, preferred to deal with theft themselves. The military police had to supervise the movement of prisoners and also ensure the free flow of military transport to and from the front, a task that became particularly burdensome when a major offensive was due. Major E. A. McKechnie, appointed assistant Provost Marshal in Arras in February 1918, outlined his duties as being in charge of police traffic control and the fire brigade, issuing the necessary orders to them “The control of the civil population, issuing passes, visiting estaminets, looking after the troops in respects of all sorts of disease, seeing that all women were looked after, keeping the roads clear of all standing traffic, and guarding and protecting all civilian property—in fact to mother all, and be ready to answer any questions that might be raised”. The military police were often disliked by troops for controlling drinking and investigating prostitution and their sexual behaviour. McKechnie reported four days of mayhem when one particularly notorious division arrived in Arras; it shot at and bombed both McKechnie and his police, and “hand to hand fighting” occurred everywhere.9 The presence of police close to the front, fulfilling their myriad of tasks as well as checking for absentees and deserters from the trenches did not endear them to the ordinary soldier. There were cynical jokes that the front line ended where you met the first gendarme or military policeman.10 In Italy the Carabinieri were particularly disliked, even hated, since they administered the ferocious disciplinary regime of Marshal Luigi Cadorna who ordered, most notoriously during the disaster at Caporetto, that deserters and men leaving the front should be summarily shot. Carabinieri units suffered enormous casualties as front line troops during the early stages of Italian participation in the war, but their increasing role and identification as police behind the front led the ordinary Italian soldiers to characterise them as imboscati—men who avoided the front line, and as such they were sometimes stoned or shot at.11 Wars may end with an armistice or the clear defeat of one side, but this does not mean an automatic end to the wartime duties of the police. Demobilisation requires management and hence the orderly supervision of getting men out of military uniforms and back to their homes. Demobilisation at the end of the First World War did not proceed as

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well as it might have done. The German Army on the Western Front just turned their back on their positions and walked home. Since many of them walked home with their weapons, to a country starving as a result of blockades by enemies and tumbling into serious unrest and revolution, there were major problems for the police who stayed at their posts. Among the allies there were military personnel who believed that demobilisation was not progressing fast enough. Many men believed that they were unfairly being kept in uniform while others, who had served for a shorter period or through some form of favouritism, were being released ahead of them. Much of this trouble was considered too serious to be left to the police and in several instances, troops were deployed. In Germany the police disappeared from the streets for a short period, overawed by the Workers and Soldiers Council and unsure who was responsible for public security. At first, and with more success in the countryside than towns, citizen militias were organised and then the new government recruited and deployed tough military auxiliaries—the first Freikorps units.12 Further police duties related to war can also be required when a conflict is over and the victors decide to occupy what had been enemy territory. French police institutions, notably the Gendarmerie Nationale moved into the contested territories of Alsace and Lorraine that had been seized by Prussia in 1871 and retaken in 1918. Equally important were those areas of German territory occupied by the victorious allies for several years following the war. A small group of the more radical women police, now redundant in Britain because of their uncompromising attitudes, were sent to Cologne in July 1923. Here they trained a local cadre of German women police recruits, sought to enforce more moral behaviour on German women found loitering near British Army installations and investigated any woman intending to marry a British soldier. The British military authorities believed that they did a good job, but they were often unpopular with both the German population and ordinary British soldiers.13 The soldiers that occupied the Rhineland brought their own police with them. Captain Ferdinand Tuohy, a former newspaper man and intelligence expert, recalled the British arrival in Cologne: “In the public thoroughfares red-capped military police might have been seen, from the first hour, directing traffic beside German police”. The main role of the Military Police appears to have been, according to Tuohy, “entering cafés in civilian clothes and ordering drinks they had no right to ask

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for. A duty which made them none too popular”.14 There were other things that made the Royal Military Police unpopular with the local population, such as enforcing regulations on local railways, which reserved some compartments for British Army officers, their ability to demand proof of identity from individual Germans and their enforcing of black market regulations. For the starving Germans, allied food and the chocolate, cigarettes, soap and so forth that could be purchased or otherwise acquired from their occupiers were like manna from heaven.15 The traditional hostility of the ordinary soldier in khaki to the military policeman remained undiminished with the policeman’s ability to demand to see identity, a leave pass, to enforce regulations about drinking, to charge a man for dirty boots and equipment or for buttons being undone and for any breach of a myriad of other minor regulations. The conclusion that “we need more research” can seem rather threadbare, yet in the case of police and war it is unquestionably relevant. Too often, even with reference to those police institutions closely linked to the military, the issues have been largely ignored. In some respects, this might be because of the notion that war is somehow an interruption to the usual, and that the history of war is the concern of military historians. The latter perspective is changing. The increasing interest in studying home fronts during wars, and the clear recognition that the end of a war does not lead overnight to a return to “normal” social, cultural and economic development are of vital importance to our understanding of the past. The recognition of what war meant for policing is a key element to these issues, one that has been too commonly and perhaps too easily ignored. The chapters in this book do not provide any definitive conclusions, rather they open up a range of issues that might be explored both in distinct, separate national examples and also in comparative experiences. Clive Emsley

Notes

1. Richard Bessel, Germany After the First World War, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993, p. 243, note 88. 2. Clive Emsley, The English Police: A Political and Social History, Harlow: Longman, 1996, pp. 121–125, 130–132.

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3.  Some of the patrol books kept by police officers in the Hertfordshire Constabulary north of London have been made available online at http:// www.hertspastpolicing.org.uk (19 February 2019). These demonstrate clearly how the ordinary police officers in a relatively rural county maintained their usual tasks (e.g., searching for missing persons, dealing with animal cruelty, petty theft, drunkenness) and administered new tasks (such as the billeting of soldiers, distributing regulations under the Defence of the Realm Act—particularly regarding drunkenness and licensing hours—arresting and giving evidence against deserters and looking for escaped prisoners of war). 4. Franz Exner, Krieg und Kriminlalität in Österreich, Vienna: HölderPichler-Tempsky AG, 1927, Chapter 4.3; Moritz Liepmann, Krieg und Kriminalität in Deutschland, Stuttgart, Berlin and Leipzig: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1930, Chapter 3.1; David Smith, “Juvenile Delinquency in Britain in the First World War”, Criminal Justice History, No. 11, 1990, pp. 119–145. 5. Clive Emsley, The Great British Bobby: A History of British Policing from the 18th Century to the Present, new edition, London: Quercus, 2010, pp. 177–188. 6. Edward Smithies, The Black Economy in England since 1914, Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1984, Chapter 2. 7. Holger H. Herwig, The First World War: Germany and Austria-Hungary 1914–1918, London: Arnold, 1997, p. 275; Laurence van Ypersele, “Les violences populaires”, in Xavier Rousseaux and Laurence van Ypersele (eds.), La Patrie crie vengeance! La répression des ‘inciviques’ belges au sortir de la guerre 1914–1918, Bruxelles: Le Cri Édition, 2008, p. 35. 8.  David Englander, “Police and Public Order in Britain 1914–1918”, in Clive Emsley, Barbara Weinberger (eds.), Policing Western Europe: Politics, Professionalism, and Public Order, 1850–1940, Westport: Greenwood Press, 1991, pp. 90–138; Clive Emsley, English Police, pp. 125–126 and 130–136; Id., The Great British Bobby, pp. 191–199. 9.  Imperial War Museum, Document 88/27/1, Reminiscences of Major E.A. McKechnie, pp. 52–53 and p. 60. 10. Olivier Buchbinder, Gendarmerie prévôtale et maintien de l’ordre (1914– 1918), Maisons-Alfort: Service historique de la Gendarmerie nationale-Phénix éd., 2004; Louis N. Panel, “Cognes, hommes noirs et grenades blanches: les enjeux de la représentation des gendarmes de la Grande Guerre”, Sociétés et Représentations, No. 16, 2003, pp. 167–182; Id., “La Grande Guerre de la Gendarmerie”, in Jean-Noël Luc, Frédéric Médard (eds.), Histoire et Dictionnaire de la Gendarmerie, Paris: Éditions Jacob-Duvernet, 2013, pp. 43–52. 11.  Richard Oliver Collin, “The Italian Police and Internal Security from Giolitti to Mussolini”, Ph.D. (Oxford University), 1984, pp. 106–110. 12. Richard Bessel, Germany After the First World War, p. 217, pp. 243–244.

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13. R.M. Douglas, Feminist Freikorps: The British Voluntary Women Police, 1914–1940, Westport Conn.: Praeger, 1999, pp. 92–93. 14. Ferdinand Tuohy, Occupied 1918–1930: A Postscript to the Western Front, London: Thornton and Butterworth, 1931, p. 41, 145. 15. Imperial War Museum, Document 11701, papers of L/Cpl Thomas Norton, and Document 02/55/01, papers of Charles Robert Keller, fol. 97.

Contents

1

Policing in Wartime: Without Any Disruption? General Introduction 1 Jonas Campion, Laurent López and Guillaume Payen

Part I  Police Forces at the Front 2

Bobbies in Khaki: The British Military Police in the First World War 17 Clive Emsley

3

Was There a “Lotharingian Axis”? Belgian, French, and Italian Military Policing During the First World War: A Study in Comparative History 33 Louis N. Panel

4

Tracking the ‘Enemy Within’: Alcoholisation of the Troops, Excesses in Military Order and the French Gendarmerie During the First World War 45 Stéphane Le Bras

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5

Carabinieri Pilots and Italian Military Aviation During the First World War 65 Flavio Carbone

6

A War-time Secret Police: Activities of the Geheime Feldpolizei on the Western Front During the First World War 75 Gérald Sawicki

7

Disarmed and Captive: Greek Gendarmes in Görlitz 89 Anastasios Zografos

Part II  Police Forces on the Home Front 8

Normal Police Work in Times of War: Really? The Case of Ille-et-Vilaine (Brittany, France) 105 Jean-François Tanguy

9

The Complex Policing System of Oldenburg, a Middle German State Far Away from the War? 121 Gerhard Wiechmann and Guillaume Payen

10 The Gendarmerie of Luxembourg 141 Gérald Arboit 11 The Gendarmerie of the Habsburg Empire During the First World War 157 Helmut Gebhardt 12 The Serbian Gendarmerie’s Involvement in the First World War: From Keeping Order at the Rear to Fighting on the Front Line 169 Stanislav Sretenović

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Part III Policing Far from the War? The Empires and the Neutrals 13 The Swiss Police Forces and Counter-Intelligence (1914–1918) 183 Christophe Vuilleumier 14 The Swiss Army Gendarmerie: A Composite Force Facing the Challenges of the First World War 195 Philippe Hebeisen 15 Fighting the ‘Enemy Within’: Australian Police and Internal Security in World War I 211 Joan Beaumont 16 Coercion, Consent and Surveillance: Policing New Zealand 227 Richard S. Hill 17 Police Askaris, Kaiserliche Landespolizisten and Leoleo: The German Colonial Police Forces in 1914–1915 243 Gerhard Wiechmann Part IV The Aftermath of the War: Back to Peace-Time Policing 18 The Russian Police in War and Revolution 257 Jonathan Daly 19 Finding a New Balance: The Belgian Security System in the Aftermath of WWI 273 Jonas Campion 20 A War Without an End: French Gendarmes and the Post-conflict Process (1918–1921) 293 Romain Pécout

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CONTENTS

21 “The Penetration of French Ideas”: The Role of the Gendarmerie of Alsace and Lorraine in the Local Rebuilding of French National Identity (1918–1925) 307 Georges Philippot 22 Parisian Policemen and the Traces of the Great War 323 Christian Chevandier

23 Conclusion: Living and Seeing the War Without Immediate Experience 337 Jonas Campion and Laurent López General Bibliography 347 Index 367

Notes

on

Contributors

Gérald Arboit is an historian specialising in intelligence and an associated researcher at the Sorbonne and the SIRICE laboratory registered with CNRS (France’s national centre for research). He earned a Ph.D. in the History of International Relations from the University of Strasburg (1999) where he also defended a post-doctoral thesis on intelligence. One of his recent publications on the subject is Des services pour la France. Du dépôt de la Guerre à la DGSE, Paris: CNRS Ed., 2014. Joan Beaumont is Professor Emerita, at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre of the Australian National University, Canberra. Her publications include the critically acclaimed Broken Nation: Australians and the Great War (2013), which among winning other awards, was joint winner of the 2014 Prime Minister’s Literary Award (for Australian history). Jonas Campion holds a doctorate in history, jointly awarded by the UCLouvain and Sorbonne University. A visiting lecturer at Louvain, he is also a temporary assistant lecturer at the University of Lille and a researcher at the IRHIS institute. Specialising in the history of policing and twentieth-century security policies in Europe, his research interests also take a transnational approach to post-1945 political transitions in the aftermath of war and their underlying security and repression issues.

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Flavio Carbone is Lieutenant colonel of the Italian Carabinieri. An alumnus of the Nunziatella Military School of Naples, he later earned two PhDs in modern history and archival sciences. He has been in charge of the Historical Archives of the Carabinieri Corps for the last 10 years and has published 5 books on related subjects. Christian Chevandier  is Professor of Modern History at the University of Le Havre. His research focuses on workers and the history of labour in France in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Included in his recent publications are: Policiers dans la ville. Une histoire des gardiens de la paix, Paris, Gallimard, 2012; Eté 44. L’insurrection des policiers parisiens, Paris, Vendémiaire, 2014; and Le travail en France. Des “Trente Glorieuses” à la présidence Macron, Paris: Belin, 2018. Jonathan Daly  gained his Ph.D. in 1992 from Harvard University. He is Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has published many books and articles on Russian and world history, including Crime and Punishment in Russia: A Comparative History from Peter the Great to Vladimir Putin, London/Oxford: Bloomsbury, 2018. Clive Emsley is Emeritus Professor of History at the Open University. He was educated at the University of York and at Peterhouse, Cambridge, and was one of the first appointments made at the Open University in 1970. He has also taught and held research fellowships at universities in Australia, Canada, France and New Zealand. For 10 years he was President of the International Association for the History of Crime and Criminal Justice hosted by the Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris, and he was a research associate of the Australian Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security. He has published and broadcast widely on the history of crime and policing. His Crime and Society in England, 1750–1900 was first published in 1987 and has recently appeared in its fifth edition. His most recent research has focused on crime and policing in wartime, notably Soldier, Sailor, Beggarman, Thief: Crime and the British Armed Services Since 1914 and Exporting British Policing During the Second World War. Helmut Gebhardt is Professor at the University of Graz (Austria). He has a law degree and professional experience in judicial practice. He began teaching as a university assistant in 1982, then qualified as a university lecturer in administrative history in 1990 and later joined the

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Institute of Legal History where he has taught as a professor since 1997. His main research interests include the history of police and gendarmerie forces, together with administrative, constitutional and criminal law. Philippe Hebeisen  currently works for the Brand Heritage Department of one of Switzerland’s top watch makers and is writing a doctoral thesis, on the construction of state police forces in the French-speaking part of Switzerland between 1848 and 1914, at the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland). He is also a member of the Centre d’histoire du XIXe siècle research centre at the Sorbonne. Richard S. Hill  is an historian who holds the title of Professor of New Zealand Studies at the Stout Research Centre for New Zealand Studies, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand. He is also a Life Member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. His work includes four books on the history of policing in New Zealand. Stéphane Le Bras is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Clermont-Auvergne (France). His research interests are mainly focused on alcoholic beverages and their markets as well as related peacetime and wartime practices. He recently wrote Le négoce des vins en Languedoc. L’emprise du marché (1900–1970), Tours: PUFR, 2019. Laurent López is a researcher and professor working for France’s National Military Archives (Service Historique de la Défense, Vincennes). For the past 15 years or so, he has been studying French and European law enforcement agencies and their mutual relations. He has published dozens of works on the subject. He holds a doctorate in modern history from the Sorbonne and is an associate researcher of the CESDIP laboratory registered with CNRS (France’s national centre for research). He is also a qualified teacher posted with the National Gendarmerie’s internal preparatory classes and lectures at the universities of Paris—PanthéonAssas and Versailles-Saint Quentin-en-Yvelines. Louis N. Panel holds a Ph.D. in history from the Sorbonne and is the author of Gendarmerie et contre-espionnage (2004) and La Grande Guerre des gendarmes (2013). A member of France’s national heritage commission and a senior heritage curator for the Ministry of Culture (conservateur des monuments historiques), he was also curator for the first exhibition staged by the French National Gendarmerie Museum (2015).

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Guillaume Payen  (Ph.D., Sorbonne University) is Lecturer at Sorbonne University, Paris, since 2016 and specialises in three different topics: intellectual and policing histories and the First World War. As head of the history department at the research centre of the French Gendarmerie Officers Academy (CREOGN), he conducted two research projects: one about the history of IT in the French Gendarmerie and one, of which this collective book is the result, about European police forces in the First World War (international conference held in Melun at the Museum of Gendarmerie in February 2016). Romain Pécout is a qualified history and geography teacher currently training after completion (2016) of his M.A. in modern history at the Sorbonne. His Master’s dissertation on French gendarmes in post-war transitions was supervised by Professor Jean-Noël Luc (Finir la guerre, gagner la paix? Les gendarmes dans l’interminable sortie de la Première Guerre mondiale [1918–1925]). Georges Philippot  is a retired Gendarmerie general and holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Metz (2007). He was born in 1939. He was trained at Saint-Cyr Military Academy and pursued his whole career in the Gendarmerie corps, having exercised all Gendarmerie functions in his successive promotions, from lieutenant to region commander. He returned to duty in 2000 to act as head of the Gendarmerie’s SHGN national archives (Service Historique de la Gendarmerie Nationale). Gérald Sawicki is a qualified teacher (with Agrégation) and holds a Ph.D. in modern history. He is also an associate researcher at the CRULH laboratory of the University of Lorraine. His publications include several journal articles and contributions to collective works on the themes of intelligence and Franco-German relations between 1871 and 1914. Stanislav Sretenović  (B.A., University of Belgrade; M.A., University of Nancy, France; Ph.D., European University Institute in Florence) is Principal Research Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary History in Belgrade, Serbia. He has written many academic books and articles about international relations, French–Italian–Serbian/Yugoslav relations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the diplomatic history of European states, cultural history and war history.

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Jean-François Tanguy is Emeritus Senior Lecturer in Modern History at the University of Rennes. His doctoral thesis examined the maintenance of law and order in the French département of Ille-et-Vilaine between 1870 and 1914. A social historian focused on state intervention, he specialises in public order and delinquency in nineteenth-century France. He is the co-editor—together with Jean Le Bihan and Yann Lagadec—of Le canton, un territoire du quotidien? (Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2009). Christophe Vuilleumier is a Swiss historian (Ph.D., University of Geneva), publishing editor and committee member of several learned societies, including the Swiss History Society. He is credited with a number of contributions that have become references in the field of Swiss history for both the seventeenth and twentieth centuries. He works as the general editor for a book series published by Slatkine and regularly writes in the Swiss press. Gerhard Wiechmann studied history and political sciences at the University of Oldenburg (1988–1994) before moving on to the Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica in Heredia from 1993 onwards. He received his Ph.D. in 2000 with a doctoral thesis on German gunboat diplomacy in Latin America. He was adjunct lecturer at the University of Oldenburg from 2000 to 2007 and again in 2010. He has published and edited numerous articles and other publications on German naval and military history. His earned in 2018 the habilitation degree with his post-doctoral thesis about German small war theories. Anastasios Zografos holds a Ph.D. in military history from the University of Montpellier III. He has taught as a Teaching Fellow at the University of Cyprus. His scientific interests mainly focus on the life experience of Greek soldiers between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century—as well as on their reintegration into society after warfare. His research also includes the study of refugees who came to Greece from Asia Minor after the catastrophe of Smyrna and their assimilation into their “new” country.

List of Figures

Fig. 10.1 Fig. 10.2 Fig. 10.3 Fig. 15.1

Number of crimes recorded by the Luxembourg Gendarmerie (1900–1919). Source La Gendarmerie au Luxembourg, 1798–1935, Luxembourg, Worré-Mertens, 1935, p. 255 Brigades of the Luxembourg Gendarmerie in 1914 (Credit G. Arboit) Economic reports by the Gendarmerie. Source La Gendarmerie au Luxembourg, 1798–1935, Luxembourg, Worré-Mertens, 1935, p. 255 Surveillance organisations of the First World War (Adapted by CartoGIS, The Australian National University, from Frank Cain, The Origins of Political Surveillance in Australia, Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1983, p. XI)

143 146 149

222

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List of Tables

Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 2.3 Table 9.1 Table 17.1 Table 17.2

Court martial trials of other ranks at home and abroad 22 Court martial convictions (selected offences) of other ranks by year, 1 October 1914–30 September 1919 26 Court martial convictions (other ranks, selected offences) per 100,000 men (1914–1918) 27 Gendarmerie statistics concerning crime in Oldenburg Duchy (1914–1916) 125 German colonies in 1914 244 Staffing of the German colonial police forces (1913) 248

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CHAPTER 1

Policing in Wartime: Without Any Disruption? General Introduction Jonas Campion, Laurent López and Guillaume Payen

“This war, in fact, made no sense at all. It couldn’t go on”.1 Inspired by his own experience as a cuirassier in the 12th armoured cavalry regiment, Louis-Ferdinand Céline gave those words to Ferdinand Bardamu, the antihero of his Journey to the End of the Night (Voyage au bout de la Nuit) and his mouthpiece to convey the feelings of confusion and dismay overwhelming a conscript drafted into a war of which the meaning utterly escaped him. Though historians have endeavoured for a century not only to retrieve every detailed event of this first worldwide conflagration J. Campion (*)  Institute of Historical Research of Septentrion (UMR CNRS 8529), Lille University, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, France e-mail: [email protected] L. López  Defense Historical Service, Vincennes, France e-mail: [email protected] G. Payen  Centre d’histoire du XIXe siècle (EA 3550)/Department of History, Sorbonne University, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_1

1

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but also to make sense of them, a significant aspect remains widely unexplored: the involvement in the war of law enforcement forces— ­ police officers and gendarmes. More or less understood to be mere “keepers of the public peace”—as Parisian officers were legally defined from 7 September 1870—these men hardly seemed destined to take part in this paroxysm of violence, perceived as inadequate or obsolete to cope with tragedy. Yet they did take part. The present collective work is mainly drawn from the proceedings of an international conference co-organised by the Research Centre of the French Gendarmerie Officers Academy (CREOGN), Paris-Sorbonne University and the Centre for Law and Justice History (CHDJ) of the UCLouvain (Belgium), that took place in February 2016 at the Gendarmerie Nationale Museum in Melun (France).2 The conference was intended to offer studies focused on European policing agencies and protagonists, with simultaneously national, transnational and comparative perspectives—not only for their intrinsic interest but also for their contribution to the overall understanding of the First World War. This book therefore stands at the crossroads between two burgeoning historiographical trends having so far failed to meet, namely the genuine renewal in research writing on the history of policing3 and the massive publishing effort—both in the recent past and on-going, nurtured by centenary commemorations—aimed at providing readers with a global history of societies at war.4 While the argument of “constraint” is often put forward to account for the compliant behaviour of soldiers, thereby hinting at the de facto presence of strong police and judicial repression, general historians of WWI seldom include research material on law enforcement forces— somewhat paradoxically, since such forces, be they civilian or military (as in the case of gendarmes), operated at the forefront of socio-political regulation, all the more so in times of crisis. Although police archives are sometimes used with a positivist outlook, that is, for the sake of the reliable “hard facts” such sources are supposed to provide, little attention is paid to the logic of their creation or to the modes of circulation and exploitation of the information they collect. Our work cannot ambition to fill every similar gap in historiography, yet it intends at least to demonstrate the relevance of studying the war through the prism of law enforcement forces. Bridging divides between rear and front line contexts, between civilian and military worlds, its purpose is to enrich the overall understanding of societies in times of collective hardship by

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building on the spectacular growth of European historiography focused on law enforcement forces during the last quarter of a century.5 Inspired by police sociology and criminology and also by political science,6 the historiography of law enforcement forces is no longer limited to describing the various institutions and their theoretical frameworks; it now includes officers themselves, together with their image and position in society, their professional culture and daily practice. Aiming for a broader picture while remaining firmly anchored in what Jacques Revel promoted as “ground-level” history, it questions—in local to transnational perspectives—the reality of hypothetical “policing systems” and their interplay,7 also widening its geographical scope to include the various worlds of European colonies.8 In this renewal, the co-directors of this volume rely on the productions of the seminar on the history of the Gendarmerie and other security bodies, opened at the Sorbonne by Jean-Noël Luc in 2000. This work has allowed consideration of the total history—political, military, social and cultural—of these forces, and has made it possible to organize 10 conferences and publish 45 books,9 including 5 on the action of the French gendarmes during the Great War10 and an international history of the armed forces in charge of public security, which proposes a detailed synthesis, 20 case studies and a table of 122 institutions.11 Despite such an abundance of new research, the First World War, as the absolute break between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, has so far remained a fundamentally unexplored moment in policing history. In France, histories of the Gendarmerie or police forces tend to concentrate on the nineteenth century and most often end their narratives in 1914.12 Likewise, nearly all works focused on the first half of the twentieth century give prominence to WWII and tend to ignore the importance of both WWI and the interwar period. It is only some 15 years ago that pioneering books—those of Olivier Buchbinder on the Gendarmerie acting as a military police force13; Soazig Delebecque on the Republican Guard14; Isabelle Roy on the Macedonian Expedition15; and most importantly the extensive survey written by Louis-Napoléon Panel16—began to show specific interest in this period of, at least apparent, discontinuity. Without further inspection, this short and intense moment may indeed seem fundamentally different from any previous or subsequent period. While the involvement of French gendarmes in the Great War is better known in this perspective, that of civilian police forces has hitherto failed to elicit any equivalent study—the exact reverse

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of what is noticeable regarding WWII, for which the number of studies on police forces17 is much greater and works investigating Gendarmerie involvement are few. This reveals, yet again, the obviously political nature of policing and its past, with narrated memories mainly focusing on the most controversial or exceptional components of repressive action in times of war (ruthless hounding of deserters during the First World War and participation in roundups under Nazi occupation during the Second World War). Though sometimes partial in its judgments, research remains mostly partial in terms of scope, that is, usually limiting its inquiry to a single law enforcement force and thereby failing to investigate the general framework and the interactive dynamics at work in the public order system (equally to be understood as a co-building process involving the population).18 A comparative approach is also lacking, that really should be mandatory—given how much the conflict entailed similar operational conditions for the various belligerents and how law enforcement forces more or less tended to copy one another. A broad, continent-wide comparative study should nonetheless be fully aware of distinctive features that similarities cannot erase; military police, for instance, were drawn from the ranks of the Gendarmerie in France, Belgium and Germany whereas the United Kingdom used an autonomous force with the Royal Military Police. While France already evidenced a relatively strong centralization of the civilian police apparatus under state authority by the early years of the twentieth century, local dimensions remained prominent in Belgium19 and Switzerland20—the issue of centralisation itself being highly controversial in the Netherlands since the mid-nineteenth century.21 Within the same individual state, distinctive features should also lead to a differentiation between institutions looking similar at first sight; France, for example, experienced wholly different conditions for its wartime use of the various Gendarmerie corps: territorial (at département level), MP or maritime—not to mention the Republican Guard (the Garde Républicaine, in Paris, is a subdivision of the Gendarmerie). Furthermore, studies of the European police and Gendarmerie forces must not be confined to Europe: the on-going conflict was a world war involving world powers, some of them in control of colonial empires where consequences echoed in one way or another. An equally extended timeframe must correspond to this widened geographical scope, designed to encompass the whole dimension of the First World War. This conflict did not abruptly come to an end with the

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1918 armistice on the western front, and preparation for the war as well as its aftermath must be included. Crucially, the conflict must also be seen in the long-term perspectives of policing history—with a chronology only partially matching that of standard political or military history. As societies were militarising, war blurred the identities of law enforcement forces, previously defined in the nineteenth century through progressive centralisation and professionalisation of policing trades; transfers between institutions took place, hybrid profiles emerged, “improvised” recruitment and “temporary” personnel came to serve. While the overall function remained unchanged, namely maintaining law and order and protecting citizens and property, new circumstances created massive disruptions within societies and the law enforcement forces regulating them. The interplay between such continuum and disruption in policing history must therefore be examined in order to determine the extent to which the Great War acted as a revealing moment, a key interval, a turning point, or even a test laboratory for new practices and ideas in the exercise of law enforcement in Europe (and its colonies). Just as peacetime economies soon had to turn into productive systems in the service of the war effort, so law enforcement forces had to adapt to new conditions. A large of number of European police and Gendarmerie officers—like so many of their fellow citizens—were also sent to the front line, either ex officio (as was the case for Italian carabinieri)22 or individually, as happened to many French gendarmes. Furthermore, war even blurred the lines between keepers and disruptors of order, for example, when forces supposed to maintain order took part in protests, like the police strikes in the United Kingdom,23 or in an extreme case, those forces that took part in the Armenian Genocide.24 Military operations and mobilisation, both physical and moral, transformed the modes of circulation for goods and people and inflated the number of regulations. All these factors came to blur the socially acceptable norms held before the war; the notion of risk itself acquired a new definition and so did levels of social acceptance or tolerance for non-standard behaviour or occurrences.25 The war thus created new dynamics that simultaneously affected institutions and identities, both collective and individual—as witnessed in the emblematic case of Jules Sébille. In command of France’s Brigades mobiles26 before 1914, this senior officer was posted as a member of the personal staff of Commander-in-Chief Marshal Joffre during the conflict. He later became director of police general services for Alsace and Lorraine, with

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a mission to reorganise all units and gallicise them after victory. He then returned to standard assignments and pursued his career within the judicial police service. Concrete wartime adaptation sometimes took place under very difficult circumstances, as often recalled in the memoirs of protagonists such as Henry Maunoury, Private Secretary of the Préfet de police in Paris who deplored in his diary entry of 2 August 1914 that: … nothing (…) had been prepared at the Préfecture. No concerted action between the Military Governor, our Préfecture de police and the Préfecture de la Seine [local administrative services] (…). Several contradictory orders were given. No agreement at all for several days.27

This is in marked contrast with the early days of the war, as experienced by the Gendarmerie brigades of the Nontron district in Dordogne (in the southwest of France) where Lieutenant Forestier noticed that “every gendarme fulfilled his assignments, calmly and without undue haste […] Everything went perfectly smoothly; my men did not report a single incident”.28 Law enforcement adaptation to wartime circumstances and a war economy is a multi-faceted and reiterative process. As the front line freezes and war becomes prolonged and industrialised, more continuous transformations are soon added to the initial impact of the conflict itself. This deeper wartime adaptation must also be appraised in terms of adjustments to daily practice, those that are destined to last but are sometimes almost imperceptible. How did the crisis affect this permanent transformative process?29 This question is key to understanding, in the medium term, the balance of regulatory dynamics within modern societies. Crucially, it is essential to highlight the underlying forms of logic being developed in and around law enforcement forces. Between opportunities and constraints affecting the general system of order, the meaning and context of change are bound to vary; our objective must be both to understand the respective weight and impact of the different stakeholders and to elucidate how these players manage to take advantage of circumstances to reach their own goals.30 Finally, conditions of this renewal process must be analysed: did law enforcement forces have at their disposal the necessary means, timeframes and numbers to bring it to completion? Far from being insignificant, such factual realities are relevant factors in understanding the role and position of law enforcement forces

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within European societies. It is widely acknowledged that the policing characteristics of any force are based on three major distinctions: being either civil or military, local or centralised in organisational terms and with general or specialised assignments. War redraws such maps on several accounts: militarisation and mobilisation of societies; a growing number of risk-prone behaviours and individuals; an overall rise in violence; a redefinition of territories; geopolitical upheavals and shifting alliances. On a worldwide scale, the First World War thus redefined the traditional boundaries of the policing equilibrium, in particular via the creation of hybrids between societies following the French model, dating back to the revolutionary period (law enforcement carried out by both civilian and military units), and societies where law enforcement was exclusively entrusted to non-military forces.31 Wartime experience also changed the modes of concrete police intervention, for instance, after the war when new social groups like veterans appeared—people with whom law enforcement forces had to deal while taking into account their patriotic aura and shared wartime memories. Hence sometimes rather ambivalent attitudes existed.32 This general transformative issue must also be examined in geographical terms (new territorial divisions and postings, a redefinition of high-risk areas and territories under changing sovereignty), as well as in material and human terms (staff reductions during mobilisation phases, the policing of “voids” resulting from military operations and the elusive return to pre-war normality in the aftermath of war). In regions where combat operations took place, as well as at the rear, the conflict entailed material consequences affecting the means at the disposal of law enforcement officers to carry out their assignments: destruction, requisition but also the interrupted renewal of supplies created specific working conditions. The material situation had an impact on the efficiency and capacity of forces. In the longer term, material effects went on to be felt during what might be called a period of (over)compensation; this was characterised by attempts to re-equip and upgrade forces necessarily having to adapt to wartime consequences with better means of communication, faster means of transportation, new weaponry and also new resources for investigative work.33 A recycling of war material for this civilian ­purpose—so-called “civilianization”34—became very frequent. Lastly, the conflict left a lasting imprint on the profile and i­dentity of law enforcement officers. This problematic area covers a number of mutually related issues surrounding in particular the relationship of

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forces to violence and their professional collective memory of conflict. Across the whole of Europe, the majority of officers forming part of the generation serving after the war had combat or even direct front line experience; the impact of this past military experience on policing practice should be explored, especially in relation to the ever-increasing tensions of the interwar years. Was this military experience made valuable, accepted and acknowledged as a source of legitimacy? Alternatively, did it only play a minor role? The professional collective memory of the Great War across European forces is another field where the ultimate consequences of the conflict are difficult to assess. Several authors have demonstrated that police and Gendarmerie officers were sometimes uneasy about their wartime non-combatant activities at the rear, the repression of soldiers and the resulting criticisms during and after hostilities; the repeated demands of French gendarmes to be granted the same carte du combatant (veteran benefits card) as fighting men is a perfect illustration of this ambivalent memory35—just like the colourful wartime nicknames that have stuck with them.36 Approaching the conflict on both the European and colonial scale must lead us to review traditional geographical boundaries. In order to achieve a proper inclusion of the effects of the conflict on European states and their law enforcement forces, new ranges must be considered for all main fronts and be added to the standard “front line versus home front” binary based on distance to the firing line. This means including not only belligerent nations but also neutral and occupied countries, since their own law enforcement forces were also put on a war footing. To quote only two cases analysed in the present work, forces in Switzerland and Luxemburg—a de facto occupied country from 1914 onwards—were submitted to the same highly specific context.37 Furthermore, the notion of home front may vary from a few kilometres behind the trenches to much farther horizons overseas—as remote from Europe as can be imagined. Beyond a mere comparative history of police and Gendarmerie forces at war, the present work therefore offers a fully connected, world-scale history of such forces. This ambitious scope also invites us to demonstrate restraint. The aim of our collective work is simply to open new perspectives—without claims of having brought final and exhaustive answers to a still developing historical field. Our ambition is rather to suggest leads, to demonstrate the interest of new problematics and to inspire researchers to think

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outside of generally accepted limitations. As well as general readers, researchers directly or indirectly interested in these issues are therefore invited to follow a general approach to the study of law and order during the First World War. For such purposes, chapters are gathered under four distinctive parts, each addressing the geography and chronology of the conflict in accordance with traditional historiographical categories—with the aim of facilitating dialogue between the various fields of study and national situations. In the first part, authors examine the general and functional impact of the front line on police and Gendarmerie officers; in contrast to this multi-faceted “combatant” role, the second part considers the notion of the “home front” in its broadest meaning and the assignments carried out by law enforcement forces within this remit. These first two parts cover all belligerent territory in Europe, addressing all conflict phases from mobilisation to the end of hostilities. Gradually moving away from belligerent countries in Europe, the third part focuses on the following fundamental query: is it actually relevant to categorise law enforcement forces from neutral countries, on the one hand, and forces operating in colonial territories, on the other hand, as wholly unconnected to the war? In other words, contributions in this third part consider the resonance of the war on “outside” or “remote” countries and contrast with the first two parts is obvious in this respect. Finally, the last part of our work revisits the aftermath of the war as experienced by law enforcement forces. When, how and under what constraints did these institutions manage to cope with or adapt to the overall return to peacetime conditions, the new balances created within states and the legacy of conflict (sometimes enduring in particular regions)? This final chronological perspective is logically intended to foster new interrogations; it invites us to consider the experience of law enforcement forces in the Great War as part of a longer, mid-term sequence only coming to an end with, for some countries, the restoration of democratic or authoritarian conditions after 1945.38 By including the multiple crises of the interwar period and the second world conflict itself, this sequence allows for the effective monitoring of the evolution of the function of policing in a generational perspective, throughout the grounding period that defined not only its societal role but also new standards for its legality and legitimacy in the second half of the twentieth century.

10  J. CAMPION ET AL.

Notes









1. Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Voyage au bout de la nuit, Paris: Denoël & Steele, 1932. English translation by Ralph Manheim (Journey to the End of the Night, New York: New Directions, 2006). 2. A full conference programme is available at http://calenda.org/353691 (15 February 2019). 3. For a recent survey of the diversity of research focussed on the history of policing, we must refer readers in particular to the fundamental work by Jean-Marc Berlière, Catherine Denys, Dominique Kalifa, and Vincent Milliot (eds.), Métiers de police. Être policier en Europe, XVIIIe–XXe siècles, Rennes: Presses Universitaires des Rennes, 2008. 4. Regarding such publications, see the online bibliography published by the “1914–1918 Encyclopedia” team at http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/bibliography/ (15 February 2019) or the collaborative bibliography edited under the authority of the International Society for First World War Studies, available at http://www.firstworldwarstudies.org/ bibliography-about.php (15 February 2019). However, and to the best of our knowledge, a global survey of this international trend in publishing is still lacking. 5.  For a recent summary and appraisal focussed on France, see Laurent López and Jean-Noël Luc, “Nouvelles histoires de gendarmes et de policiers aux XIXe et XXe siècles. Regards sur l’historiographie récente des forces de l’ordre”, Histoire, économie & société, No. 4, 2013, pp. 3–19. For a German perspective, see also Herbert Reinke, “The Politics of Police History in Germany Since the 1990s: A Participant Observation”, Crime, Histoire & Sociétés (Crime, History & Societies), Vol. 16, No. 2, 2012, pp. 99–106. For Great Britain, see Clive Emsley (ed.), History of Policing, 3 Vols, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010. 6. Such trends first came from the United States and other English-speaking countries before reaching the French-speaking world. Among pioneers, see in particular Egon Bittner, The Functions of the Police in Modern Society: A Review of Background Factors, Current Practices, and Possible Role Models, Chevy Chase: National Institute of Mental Health Center for Studies of Crime and Delinquency, Crime and Delinquency Issues, 1970; Id., Aspects of Police Work, Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1990. 7. Catherine Denys (ed.), Circulations policières 1750–1914, Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2012; Arnaud-Dominique Houte and Jean-Noël Luc (eds.), Les Gendarmeries dans le monde (XIXe–XXIe siècles), Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris Sorbonne, 2016; Clive Emsley and Barbara Weinberger (eds.), Policing Western Europe: Politics,

1  POLICING IN WARTIME: WITHOUT ANY DISRUPTION? … 









11

Professionalism and Public Order 1850–1940, New York: Greenwood Press, 1991. 8. Particularly worthy of mention concerning territorial policing in German southwest Africa is Sven Schepp, Unter dem Kreuz des Südens: auf Spuren der Kaiserlichen Landespolizei von Deutsch-Südwestafrika, Frankfurt am Main: Verlag für Polizeiwissenschaft, 2009. For the French Empire, see Jean-Pierre Bat and Nicolas Courtin (eds.), Maintenir l’ordre colonial: Afrique et Madagascar (XIXe–XXe siècles), Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012, and for contributions embracing this general perspective see Vincent Denis and Catherine Denys (eds.), Polices d’Empires: XVIIIe–XIXe siècles, Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012. For British colonies, see Michael Brodgen and Graham Ellison, Policing in an Age of Austerity: A Postcolonial Perspective, Oxon: Routledge, 2013. 9.  See list in http://lettres.sorbonne-universite.fr/IMG/pdf/histoire_de_ la_gendarmerie._sorbonne._bilan_bibliographique_2000-2017.pdf (15 February 2019). 10. In particular Louis N. Panel, La Grande Guerre des gendarmes. “Forcer, au besoin, leur obéissance?” Paris: NME-DMPA, 2013. This book was granted the Worlds at War, Worlds in Peace 2013 award. 11. Arnaud-Dominique Houte and Jean-Noel Luc (eds.), Les Gendarmeries dans le monde. 12.  So does, for instance, the programme set for the state-funded ANR research project on Systèmes policiers européens, XVIIIe–XIXe siècles (SYSPOE). This project researching European police systems from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century was initially limited to the year 1914. 13. Olivier Buchbinder, Gendarmerie prévôtale et maintien de l’ordre: 1914– 1918, Maisons-Alfort: Phénix, 2004. 14. Soazig Delebecque, La Garde Républicaine durant la Grande Guerre: 1914–1918, MA thesis (Paris-I University), 2002. 15. Isabelle Roy, La Gendarmerie française en Macédoine: 1915–1920, Maisons-Alfort: Phénix, 2004. 16. Louis N. Panel, La Grande Guerre des gendarmes. 17. Prominent in this category are works by Jean-Marc Berlière, including Policiers français sous l’Occupation, Paris: Perrin, 2009 and Polices des Temps Noirs. France 1939–1945, Paris: Perrin, 2018, as well as Christian Chevandier’s Été 1944, l’insurrection des policiers parisiens, Paris: Vendémiaire, 2014. 18. This specific aspect was examined during the recent international conference organised in Louvain-la-Neuve (30–31 May 2018) by Emmanuel Berger and Antoine Renglet. Its proceedings highlighted the approach

12  J. CAMPION ET AL. of public participation in policing during modern and contemporary periods. 19. Jonas Campion, Margo De Koster, Luc Keunings, Benoît Majerus, Xavier Rousseaux, and François Welter, “L’appareil policier en Belgique (1830– 2010)”, in Margo De Koster, Dirk Heirbaut, and Xavier Rousseaux (eds.), Deux siècles de Justice. Encyclopédie historique de la justice belge, Brugge: La Charte/Die Keure, 2015, pp. 385–419. 20. Philippe Hebeisen, “Policier suisse à l’étranger, une carrière civile ou militaire? Essai d’interprétation de la “militarité” de la fonction policière et gendarmique suisse (fin XIXe–début XXes.)”, Annuaire suisse d’histoire économique et sociale/Schweizerisches Jahrbuch für Wirtschafts und Sozialgeschichte, No. 29, 2015, pp. 127–143. 21. Guus Meershoek, De Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse politie. De Gemeentepolitie in een veranderende samenleving, Amsterdam: Boom, 2007. 22. Filippo Cappellano and Flavio Carbone, “I Carabinieri Reali al fronte nella Grande Guerra”, in Nicola Labanca and Giorgio Rochat (eds.), Il soldato, la guerra e il rischio di morire, Milano: Unicopli Edizioni, 2006, pp. 167–214. 23. David Englander, “Police and Public Order in Britain 1914–1918”, in Clive Emsley and Barbara Weinberger (eds.), Policing Western Europe: Politics, Professionalism, and Public Order, 1850–1940, New York: Greenwood Press, 1991, pp. 90–138. 24.  Glen W. Swanson, “The Ottoman Police”, Journal of Contemporary History, No. 7, January–April 1972, pp. 243–260. 25. As demonstrated in particular for Belgium by Aurore François and Benoît Majerus, regarding offences against property or the judicial handling of prostitution. See Aurore François, Guerres et délinquances juvéniles. Un demi-siècle de pratiques judiciaires et institutionnelles envers des mineurs en difficulté (1912–1950), Brugge: La Charte-Die Keure, 2011; Benoît Majerus, Occupations et logiques policières. La police bruxelloise en 1914– 1918 et 1940–1945, Bruxelles: Académie Royale de Belgique, 2007. 26. The Brigades régionales de police mobile—better known as the Brigades of the Tiger (from their creator Prime Minister Clemenceau’s popular nickname)—were mobile units in charge of judicial police assignments across the whole territory of France. They were set up in 1907 to match the increasing mobility of criminals hampering police work. See Jean-Marc Berlière, “La seule police qu’une démocratie puisse avouer? Retour sur un mythe: les brigades du Tigre”, in Marc-Olivier Baruch and Vincent Duclert (eds.), Serviteurs de l’État. Une histoire politique de l’administration française, 1875–1945, Paris: La Découverte, 2000, pp. 311–323; Laurent López, “Les archives contre la statistique officielle? Retour sur

1  POLICING IN WARTIME: WITHOUT ANY DISRUPTION? … 











13

les brigades du Tigre (Dijon, 1908–1914)”, Genèses, No. 71, February 2008, pp. 106–122. 27. Henry Maunoury, Police de guerre (1914–1919): documents secrets, Brignais: éditions des Traboules, 2014 (First Edition dated 1937), p. 21. 28. Ignace-Émile Forestier, Gendarmes à la Belle Époque, Paris: éditions France-Empire, 1983, p. 176. 29. For a general exploration, although one that is already somewhat dated, of the links between the various types of transformation affecting law enforcement forces in times of crisis, see Cyrille Fijnaut, Opdat de macht een toevlucht zij? Een historische studie van het politieapparaat als een politieke instelling, Antwerpen: Kluwer, 1979. 30. Jean-Marie Fecteau and Janice Harvey (eds.), La régulation sociale entre l’acteur et l’institution. Pour une problématique historique de l’interaction (Agency and Institutions in Social Regulation: Toward an historical understanding of their interaction), Montréal: Presses de l’Université du Québec, 2005. 31. No single state relied exclusively on Gendarmerie forces in 1914. This is still the case today but the majority of states uses only non-military police forces. 32. Chris Millington, From Victory to Vichy: Veterans in Interwar France, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012; Id., “Street-fighting Men: Political Violence in Inter-war France”, The English Historical Review, No. 538, 2013, pp. 606–638. 33. For such trends in Belgium, see Jonas Campion, De Rijkswacht (1918– 1957): De Belgische Gendarmerie tussen evolutie en revolutie, Buren: Stichting Vrienden van het Museum der Koninklijke Marechaussee, 2013. 34. This word was first coined by military sociology specialists to refer to the process of integrating civilian elements into the res militaris. 35.  Louis N. Panel, “Les gendarmes ont-ils fait la guerre de Quatorze? L’histoire de la carte du combattant: histoire d’un malentendu”, Force Publique. Revue de la Société Nationale Histoire et Patrimoine de la Gendarmerie, No. 1, 2006, pp. 59–72. 36. Belgian Gendarmes in particular were nicknamed, during and after the war, piottepakkers (catchers of piottes, the nickname of Belgian soldiers fighting on the Yser Front). 37.  The Dutch case may also be mentioned, as amply studied by Cyrille Fijnaut, De geschiedenis van de Nederlandse politie. Een staatsinstelling in de maalstroom van de geschiedenis, Amsterdam: Boom, 2007. 38.  This continues and broadens perspectives already outlined in Cyrille Fijnaut (ed.), The impact of WWII on Policing in North West Europe, Tilburg: Leuven University Press, 2004.

PART I

Police Forces at the Front

CHAPTER 2

Bobbies in Khaki: The British Military Police in the First World War Clive Emsley

In the generation before the First World War the British political ­establishment and its senior police officers liked to think of, and often spoke of, their police as “the best in the world”. They stressed that “the Bobby”, so called after Sir Robert Peel who as Home Secretary had established the first “new police” in London in 1829, was non-political, non-military and unarmed, patrolling his beat with nothing more than a wooden baton concealed in a special trouser pocket. Some European Liberals praised the concept of the British Bobby, arguing that this was the kind of police force that should be developed in their countries, although often this was principally to criticise authoritarian governments. Yet there were instances when Bobbies were political and when they carried weapons that were considerably more lethal than the wooden baton. The helmet worn by the Bobby also gave him a rather more military look than the rhetoric appeared to allow. Moreover, while percentages varied from force to force and depended largely on the thinking of the

C. Emsley (*)  The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_2

17

18  C. EMSLEY

local chief constable, many police officers were recruited from the army. Equally significant, a large number of chief constables, especially those in command of county forces and those in larger cities, had served as relatively senior officers in the army or in one of the police forces that patrolled the far-flung empire where a military gendarmerie-style system of policing often acted in place of a civilian-style Bobby. During this period the British Army had something of a gendarmerie-type role across the Empire. A high percentage of its regiments were stationed overseas, and it had fought only one short, geographically limited war in Europe since the defeat of Napoleon. The British Army was composed entirely of volunteers. Its victories were celebrated but, in many quarters, it was viewed with suspicion. Two probably apocryphal quotations from the Duke of Wellington—that his soldiers were “the scum of the earth enlisted for drink”, and “I don’t know if they frighten the enemy, but by God, they frighten me”—characterised the way that some respectable British people regarded the ordinary soldier. Tommy Atkins1 was, in their eyes, a dangerous criminal and drunkard. Garrison towns in Britain could be rough places, at least in some areas; and Bobbies had difficulties in dealing with disorderly soldiers. It was the same across the Empire. The rank of Provost Marshal, the senior officer in charge of maintaining order in the army dated back to the Middle Ages. Special police units had been recruited to act on the ground for the Provost Marshal during the Peninsular War, and then during the occupation ­following Napoleon’s defeat. These Assistant Provost Marshals (APMs) were officers with the authority to hang serious offenders, primarily looters; it is unclear where the men who worked under the APMs as the ordinary military police were found. During the Crimean War a police unit of about 100 men, called the Mounted Staff Corps, was recruited from the Metropolitan Police and the Irish Constabulary; the latter, unlike the Metropolitan Police, was a gendarmerie-style organisation in which the men were trained in the use of firearms and carried them on their daily patrols. Both Wellington’s provosts and the Crimean War military police had been disbanded at the end of hostilities. Only in the last quarter of the nineteenth century did the army decided to create two permanent police units, the Military Mounted Police and the Military Foot Police. In 1914 these military police numbered a little over 500 men. The vast expansion of the army during the First World War led to a 50-fold increase in the number of Redcaps, as the military police became known because of the red cover over the top of their peaked caps.2

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This brief chapter aims to give a broad introduction to the British Military Police during the First World War, its growth, duties and the kind of offences it dealt with. The conclusion of this chapter will draw some comparisons between the duties and acceptance of the British Bobby and the British Redcap.

Expansion and Duties Unlike the military police of the Crimean War, the two separate branches of military police that existed at the close of the nineteenth century were recruited from soldiers who had at least 5 years of service; they had to be sober in their habits, active, discreet and intelligent. Their principal duties concerned army discipline and the enforcement of military law; as the Manual of Military Law issued in 1914 put it: “the object of military law is to maintain discipline”. Yet the first notably significant, albeit tiny, increase in the number of military police at the outbreak of the war had little to do with the army. The German invasion of Belgium led to a flood of refugees and an enormous number of these made their way across the Channel; on 15 November, for example, the Daily Express reported that 11,000 had landed in Folkestone the day before.3 Many in Britain were sympathetic to the plight of “poor little Belgium” and its people; but in the decade before the outbreak of war there had been concern about spies and landings by enemy troops and this had been fostered by a series of popular novels and plays. Slightly earlier there was concern about an influx of Jewish refugees escaping pogroms in central and eastern Europe which, in 1905, had led to the passage of the Aliens Act. Between 1910 and 1913 a secret register of aliens had been prepared by what was to become (in 1916) Military Intelligence Section 5 (MI5). At the beginning of the war the Alien Restriction Act was passed and immediately some 21 suspected spies were arrested. Shortly afterwards a special military police unit of 10 men, who could speak French, was formed from the Metropolitan Police Special Branch to check on refugees at ports of departure and arrival. The majority of men appointed to the military police appear to have been similar to those recruited before the war, but as ordinary civilian police officers were found to be serving as reservists and then as volunteers, it must have seemed logical to let them transfer their expertise to the army. Also, early in 1915, the War Office and the Home

20  C. EMSLEY

Office circulated chief constables, seeking assistance in getting suitable men from the civilian police to apply to join the military police. These chief constables, in turn, discussed the matter with their local authorities; some of the local authorities, caught up in patriotic fervour, were only too keen to encourage police officers to enlist. In Southampton, for example, the watch committee permitted three of its mounted constables to go while a member of the town council offered to do 4 hours duty a day to release a fourth man. Men who had retired from the army and the police were also invited to apply directly to the corps, enclosing with their application personal details and their certificate of discharge from the army. It was pointed out that those accepted would be paid as lance corporals immediately and that, if they were already in receipt of an army pension, they would be allowed to keep it.4 At least 77 men have been identified as joining the military police from the Manchester police force alone; this constituted about 6% of Manchester’s police force of just over 1200. In the county of Surrey about 4% of the local constabulary joined.5 There were plans for appointing detectives to the military police and in June 1916 seven detectives from Liverpool City Police were deployed along lines of communication. However, there was no detective unit until the creation of the Special Investigation Branch in 1940 and a large number of the men with detective experience were seconded to work with military intelligence.6 Harold Collinson provides an example of a good civilian police applicant for the military police. He had served for 10 years in various branches of the Royal Artillery before leaving the army and joining the police force of the industrial town of Middlesbrough. Early on in his police career he appears to have been cautioned for “unsatisfactory conduct” following his violent arrest of a suspect. He put this behind him and rose to the rank of sergeant. He re-enlisted in the army in 1915 and was transferred to the Military Foot Police in July 1916. Here he was entrusted with making enquiries into the looting of the dead, a duty that was noted as frequently putting him in positions of danger and which earned him the Distinguished Conduct Medal for “conspicuous gallantry”. In July 1918 Collinson, now described as a “Detective Sergeant” in the military police, and Lance Corporal William Stockton were watching a bridge near Calais, in particular they were on the lookout for absentees. They were in disguise, to the extent that they were wearing the badges of the Royal Artillery and not carrying pistols generally carried by military policemen. “I have orders to carry my revolver

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when on ordinary police duty”, explained Lance Corporal Stockton, “but when on detective duty we are given a free hand”. They spotted a suspect officer; Collinson generously and fatally, allowed the officer some time to say farewell to the lady he was escorting. The officer, Lieutenant John Patterson responded by using his own revolver to shoot and kill Collinson. Patterson was the only British officer to be executed for ­murder during the war.7 James Walmsley was another ex-soldier who answered the call to join the military police. Walmsley had joined the Royal Horse Guards in 1905; in May 1907 he was awarded the Good Conduct Medal but, for some reason, he lost it the following month. By the end of 1909 he seems to have decided that army life was not for him and, at a cost of £25, he bought himself out. It is not clear what Walmsley did over the next 5 years, possibly he joined a police force, but in 1915 (with £9 of his buy-out money returned to him) he was back in the army as a member of the Mounted Military Police, stationed in Alexandria, Egypt. From here he regularly sent post cards to his family; he also kept a diary. In Alexandria, Walmsley’s duties were principally patrolling and ensuring that soldiers and sailors were out of local bars by 9.00 p.m. Aside from the heat—virtually every entry begins with a comment about the heat in Alexandria—his main problems appear to have been Australian soldiers. The “Diggers” were regarded as excellent fighting men, but they did not particularly mind who they fought, and the British High Command regarded them as highly insubordinate; indeed, the Australians seem to have made a point of being impertinent or disrespectful to British officers. In Walmsley’s experience they created disturbances by refusing to pay for beer, becoming drunk and disorderly and causing damage in bars. It was, however, a British sailor that drew a knife against him, along with three members of the Army Service Corps that he arrested for theft. In the summer of 1915 Walmsley was sent to the Dardanelles where his policing duties changed. No soldier could exist on the beach head without being in the trenches; Walmsley and his fellow Redcaps found themselves in as much danger as other troops, and often fired at the enemy. “Shot a Turk from Sniper’s Post, 12.30 pm”, he recorded in his diary entry dated 8 August. In addition, he had the extremely unpleasant and dangerous task of collecting the pay books of the dead which meant climbing “on top between trenches”; and there was always the unpopular task of looking for, and arresting stragglers.8

22  C. EMSLEY

Watching for absentees and deserters was a major task for the military police behind the front lines; together these disciplinary offences made up almost half the total number of court martial convictions in the enlarged British Army of wartime (Table 2.1). military police hovered around the French ports and other transport hubs watching for men on the run; often such observations met with success, although the frightened, sometimes shell-shocked men hoping to get home to see their families, rarely seemed good at disguising themselves or devising convincing stories for their movements or their lack of a leave pass.9 The search for deserters and men avoiding the draft on the home front irritated civilians; the military police, together with their civilian counterparts, moved through football match crowds, audiences at theatres, music halls and picture palaces asking to see papers, like exemption cards for men of military age.10 In February 1917 a group of military and civilian police rounded up male passengers on 10 trains at Broad Street Station in East London and detained 20 who claimed to have left their registration cards or military papers at home.11 The military police followed up leads to identify where absentees were hiding, for example, one Table 2.1  Court martial trials of other ranks at home and abroad Offence Total Miscellaneous military offences Miscellaneous civil offences Desertion Absence without leave Mutiny Cowardice Striking and violence Threatening and insubordinate language Disobedience Quitting/sleeping on post Drunkenness Offence against inhabitants Theft Fraud Indecency

4 August 1914–31 March 1920 (298,310 trials) 266,513 convictions 49,712 3040 38,584 87,131 1807 541 13,084 29,975 11,439 8790 39,906 1704 9322 950 270

Source Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War, London, 1922, Part XXIII, Section 2

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Redcap corporal found two absentees working in a tailor’s shop in East London. One of the absentees was the tailor’s brother, and the tailor himself was fined £100 at Thames Police Court.12 The general annoyance this caused was reflected in a letter from a “Wounded Soldier”, published in the Nottingham Evening News. The “Wounded Soldier”, however, spoiled his case by insisting that two of the Redcaps in the city were German spies, and that rather than being a general nuisance to soldiers, the remainder of the Redcaps should go to France and get themselves wounded as he had done, seven times over. The editor and proprietor of the newspaper found themselves in court for publishing the letter; they were fined £60 each and an additional £5 and 5 shillings in costs. The prosecutor also pointed out that of the 16 military policemen serving in and around Nottingham no fewer than 12 had been wounded at the front.13 Occasionally, arrests by the military police on the home front led to confrontations, sometimes violent, with civilians who decided to take the side of the ordinary soldier and either argue with Redcaps or attempt rescues.14 Pettifogging the enforcement of discipline sometimes infuriated troops. Soldiers were supposed to acknowledge an officer with a salute on every occasion they met one. The rule was often ignored at the front or in camp as, it was admitted, men would have their arms “working windmill fashion”. But at the beginning of 1916 the military police were ordered to take the name of any man failing to salute an officer—and that if that man was on leave he was to be recalled to his unit immediately.15 Probably this kind of discipline lay behind a large number of court martials for “miscellaneous military offences”, threatening and insubordinate language and perhaps also “striking and violence”, though probably only a few of these offences were directed at military policemen (Table 2.1). The category “miscellaneous military offences”, however, provided an officious Redcap with a range of minor misdemeanours with which he could threaten, or punish a recalcitrant soldier. Yet the unpopularity of the military police and the aggressive behaviour of groups of Tommies towards them, especially when drunk, must have fostered nervousness among some Redcaps. The serious mutiny at Étaples in September 1917 was sparked when a military policeman panicked, drew his revolver and fired, mortally wounding a Scottish soldier and also a French woman who happened to be passing.16 Towns near the front line were given town mayors, often just an ordinary army officer whose job was to supervise the troops billeted in or

24  C. EMSLEY

moving through his district. The monthly war diaries of these officers listed various offences committed by troops; most often these were disciplinary offences concerning drunkenness or men returning late to their billets. Sometimes they were more serious crimes such as rape or theft, involving local people and the local police. In July 1915, for example, the town Major of Poperinge on the edge of the Ypres Salient had to deal with an accusation of rape brought to him by the Belgian Gendarmerie, and the reported theft of a woman’s handbag containing 190 francs and various other articles.17 The most effective executive arm available to town majors were military policemen, and when an offensive was imminent the Redcaps assumed another important policing role— the management of traffic. Any offensive required the movement of enormous numbers of men and equipment. Infantrymen marched, but there were also lorries, horsedrawn waggons, artillery pieces, motorcycle dispatch riders, even occasional cavalry. Once the offensive began there were walking wounded, ambulances, prisoners, reinforcements and replenishments of food and ammunition to be moved. Control and direction were essential to avoid chaos and jams. An army captain who had recently moved to the front, described the problems in a dispatch for the Daily Express. The traffic of the densest London street is not denser or thicker than it is in this moderately-sized French town at times. We have military police controlling it at important points with just the same exactitude and authority as a London metropolitan policeman orders affairs in Trafalgarsquare or Piccadilly-circus.18

There is no surprise in the comparison that he used given the English gentleman’s attitude to the British Bobby. It is a little surprising, however, to find general staff reluctant to allow military police, experienced in traffic management, to be grafted on to civilian plans; discussions on this matter took from October 1917 to August 1918.19

Civilian Offences According to the Army Act of 1881 criminal offences by soldiers were to be tried in civilian courts, “unless such person at the time he committed the offence was on active service, or such place is more than one hundred miles as measured in a straight line from any city or town

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to which the offender can be tried for such an offence by a competent civil court”. A “competent court” essentially meant a British court and since so many of the pre-war army were serving abroad in imperial territories with British courts, this presented no problem. Similarly, there were few problems with the arrest and prosecution of British and imperial troops deployed in the Middle East; no senior officer, and no senior government official was prepared to let a British soldier go before any form of non-white tribunal. Problems arose once the British Army landed in Europe; it was a fact that these troops were on active service and therefore liable only to face an army court, but it was also necessary to demonstrate to white, European allies that offences committed by British troops would be taken seriously and pursued. Senior provosts were aware that they needed to avoid serious confrontations with Belgian and French allies and, according to some contemporary comment, this led to a few British soldiers being arrested and brought before court martials on dubious charges so as to demonstrate the fairness of the British military’s judicial system. For example, in April 1916, a soldier in the Royal Engineers was accused of molesting a Belgian girl. The soldier insisted that he had simply lifted the child, aged about 10 or 11 years from a ladder in his billet. The girl had run home to her mother; the mother reported it to the local Gendarmerie; the Gendarmerie reported it to the British Military Police, and the soldier was arrested, put in the cells and charged. The officer, Lieutenant John Foxell, who commanded the soldier’s unit protested but was told by the provost that “this sort of thing was all too common, and one must make an example”. All of the junior officers in the unit spoke up for the man at his court martial but Foxell concluded: “The court was out to make an example – as the APM predicted – and they meant to find my man guilty. All the time they acted as though they were counsel for the prosecution”. The soldier was sentenced to 42 days of Field Punishment No. 1. The verdict was subsequently quashed, but only after the man had served more than half the sentence.20 The convictions for different offences committed at home and abroad offer interesting comparisons (Table 2.2). In the civilian world some of these offences, most obviously “insubordination”, could never have been brought before a court and others would have been largely police-­ generated offences, such as drunkenness where a police officer would observe a drunk and make an arrest possibly without the involvement of any third party. It is impossible to assess the number of offences in

713

119 350 7 6372

1968

2442 679 97 2138

2561 1029 104 8510

2681 3640 810 155 1442

1314 81 643 11 9849

1607

Abroad

Home

Total

Home

Abroad

1915–1916

1914–1915

3721 1453 166 11,291

2921

Total

5902 969 170 1062

1035

Home

146 574 12 7222

1483

Abroad

1916–1917

6048 1543 182 8284

2518

Total

4130 1279 212 487

785

Home

142 1592 10 6518

1913

Abroad

1917–1918

Source Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War, London, 1922, Part XXIII, Section 2

Striking or violence Insubordination Theft Fraud Drunkenness

Offence

4272 2871 222 7005

2698

Total

1861 654 111 289

487

Home

140 1221 16 3427

1140

Abroad

1918–1919

2001 1875 127 3716

1627

Total

Table 2.2  Court martial convictions (selected offences) of other ranks by year, 1 October 1914–30 September 1919

26  C. EMSLEY

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Table 2.2 for “insubordination” and “drunkenness” that was the result of action by the military police and the number resulting from charges made by non-commissioned officers and commissioned officers. Probably a significant number originated with the military police. Overall the comparison between arrests at home and abroad is very suggestive. It seems quite probable that the high number of convictions for insubordination emerged as a result of clashes over behaviour and answering back to Redcaps threatening to arrest soldiers for dirty or unbuttoned uniforms, for example. The high percentage of such convictions at home suggests a determination, on the part of High Command, to enforce discipline before men went to the front. Convictions for insubordination abroad remained consistently over 90% throughout the war while, towards its end, there was a significant increase in “striking and violence” overseas—suggesting war weariness and a desire to go home on the part of Tommies. The large number of convictions for drunkenness overseas is probably indicative of the activity of Redcap patrols around bars frequented by soldiers; it also suggests that drunkenness at the front was considered a serious threat to discipline and to the army’s ability to fight. Venereal disease was a similar threat to the army’s ability to fight and another preventive task for the military police. Redcaps were required to interview men with venereal diseases to find out where such diseases had been caught. Unfortunately, there are no statistics and little in the way of evidence about how they set about their preventive role. A final point to make about conviction statistics is how relatively low the figures are for those activities that are normally considered as criminal—specifically “fraud” and “theft”. Table 2.3 relates the convictions to the growth in the army and is included to demonstrate the danger of relying on raw figures about offences. Overall the army appears to have become better behaved as the war progressed, this may have been because soldiers were kept busier than during peacetime; equally it could be that the patriotic volunteering of 1914 to 1915 and then, from 1916, conscription by widening the Table 2.3  Court martial convictions (other ranks, selected offences) per 100,000 men (1914–1918) Offence Striking or violence Drunkenness Theft

1914–1915

1915–1916

1916–1917

1917–1918

129 422 51

97 376 47

63 219 38

64 177 71

28  C. EMSLEY

net of those social groups brought into the ranks diluted the numbers of potential offenders. These are questions that cannot be easily answered, though it is interesting to note the expansion of theft—a typical offence within the civilian world—in the final year of the war. There might be jurisdictional issues when a soldier committed an offence in Britain in league with a British civilian. Unless martial law was declared, which it never was in England, Scotland and Wales during the First World War, a civilian could not be arrested by a military policeman or tried by military court martial. However, a soldier could be arrested by a civilian police officer and tried in a civilian court. Consequently, if a soldier in Britain stole War Department property and passed it to a civilian to be sold on for a profit the only court capable of hearing the case against a thief and a receiver was a civilian one. A good example of this was the trial of an army cook at the Grimsby Magistrate’s Court in August 1915. The cook had allegedly stolen 17 pounds of army beef and passed it to the woman who washed his linen. The civilian police had searched her house and found quantities of butter, tinned fruit, jam and various other foodstuffs which appeared to have been purloined from army stores. She was charged with receiving stolen goods and since he was implicated in her offence, the cook was also brought before a civilian court.21 Similarly, a month later, 47 workmen appeared before a magistrate in Surrey for the theft of military clothing and other articles. The goods had been taken from an army camp near Godalming, but because the men were civilians they had to appear before a civilian court.22 The contrast can be found in the case of Guardsman Ernest Clithero, who was tried for stealing a leg of lamb at Victoria Barracks, Windsor early in 1916. Clithero had seen what he believed to be a perfectly good piece of meat thrown into a rubbish bin; he took it and passed it to a second soldier. Since no civilian was involved, there was nothing to prevent Clithero from facing a court martial.23 The early twentieth century saw the gradual emergence of the motor car as a vehicle used for leisure. Before the outbreak of war, the civilian police had earned a degree of unpopularity for their pursuit of speeding motorists. In 1916 the military police began assisting their civilian counterparts by using stop watches to check the speed of both military and civilian vehicles moving through the military area of the garrison town of Aldershot. Military policemen were not sworn in as constables like members of the civilian police and consequently had no formal powers of arrest over anyone not in the armed forces. Nevertheless, the evidence collected by military speed traps was accepted by local magistrates’ courts

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and a mixture of civilians and army officers were convicted on military police evidence and subsequently fined for exceeding 12 miles an hour.24 Members of the armed forces reflect the societies from which they are drawn; good things about members of a particular society can be found among soldiers from that society, however, bad characteristics can also be found. The consequence is that soldiers can be as susceptible to criminal temptation as anyone else, even among their own kind. Theft was a criminal offence within the army and it was possible for a victim to report such a theft to a Redcap. More often, however, soldiers opted to settle matters among themselves. A man who volunteered for the Royal Engineers wrote to his parents about having money stolen from his ­billet. “It has learnt [sic] me a lesson”.25 The same thing happened again some time later, and the soldier explained to his mother that he thought that he knew the culprit who was “on the beer”. He planned to confront his suspect; unfortunately, there is no correspondence to explain what happened next. The military “family”, more tightly knit the lower down the ranks you focus, preferred to keep such matters within the family. A man who stole from the men who lived and fought alongside him in an infantry section (around 10 men) or platoon (around 30–40 men), would find little sympathy from his comrades and was likely to suffer a beating. The same can be said for men within the same company (100 men or more). Sometimes complaints would be made to a platoon or company officer, who also would want to keep the matter in the ­family and not involve the military police. The officer himself might authorise his toughest non-commissioned officers to deal with the matter, in other words to punish the offender with a beating. The officer was also authorised to impose his own punishment, such as a stoppage of pay, extra fatigues or confining a man to barracks. Theft from members of another regiment, or another army (even when it was an ally), was different. Hostilities between different units, often fuelled by drink, were not exactly encouraged—nor were they always frowned upon, especially if it was felt that such hostility might enhance a unit’s solidarity and morale, and especially if fights were won—whether or not it was one of their own that had caused trouble as a consequence of minor theft.26 In such instances soldiers might be said to have been continuing and emphasising the traditions of tough masculinity which had been under attack since at least the early eighteenth century by a new form of bourgeois respectability that hailed probity and good work ahead of a strong right arm as appropriate indicators of masculinity.

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Bobbies and Redcaps: A Contrast in Style or of Type? The Redcap was responsible for only one special type of British person— those in the armed forces. He was not sworn as a constable and had no authority over the general public; when Redcaps were engaged in searching or arresting individuals in Britain, unless they were military personnel on military property, they required the assistance of civilian police. Unlike civilian police, Redcaps, at least in wartime, were generally armed with pistols. Redcaps were mainly recruited from within the army, but as the number of military police needed to grow to police the growing number of ordinary soldiers, senior army officers looked to the civilian police; they appear to have favoured reservists who had recently left and were serving in the civilian police. Here there does appear something of a clash between the traditional perception of the unarmed, non-military Bobby and the fact that a significant number of Bobbies had a military past, and that in wartime, Bobbies were encouraged to join the ranks of the Redcaps. Yet, following the police strike of 1918, the Desborough Committee, appointed to investigate the pay and conditions of police forces across the United Kingdom, could see no major problem with encouraging soldiers to join the police. Rather it considered it pertinent: … to draw special attention to the beneficial effects, both physical and mental, which can be derived from a short period of service in the Army, provided that advantage is also taken of the present Army educational system. We consider accordingly that police authorities should be encouraged to give special consideration to men who have qualified themselves in this way.27

Notes

1. The origin of the name Thomas (or Tommy) Atkins as slang for the ordinary British soldier is uncertain. It seems to have been used in the eighteenth century, though the Duke of Wellington allegedly praised the courage of a mortally wounded soldier called Thomas Atkins who had distinguished himself in one of the Duke’s battles. In 1815 it was

2  BOBBIES IN KHAKI: THE BRITISH MILITARY POLICE … 











31

adopted as a generic name by the War Office on sample infantry forms in the Soldiers Account Book, particularly when a man could not sign his own name. The term was not much used by British soldiers themselves but became popular with allies and enemies during the First World War. 2. “Redcaps” was the polite term used to describe military policemen. The red on their caps also led to them being referred to less politely by ordinary soldiers as “Cherry Nobs”. They were also known as “monkeys”, an abusive term that is still used today by soldiers. The latter, it has been suggested, originated during the Egyptian campaign of 1885 when the Military Foot Police wore red pillbox caps that were noted as similar to the red caps worn by the monkeys of the organ-grinders in the souk. 3. Daily Express, 15 November 1914, p. 1. 4. Manchester Guardian, 22 January 1915, p. 3 and 21 May, p. 7; Times, 27 March 1915, p. 8. 5.  My thanks to Richard Callaghan the archivist of the Corps of Royal Military Police for sharing this current research project. 6. Gary Sheffield, The Redcaps: A History of the Royal Military Police and Its Antecedents from the Middle Ages to Gulf War, London: Brassey, 1994, p. 83. 7. Julian Putkowski and Mark Dunning, Murderous Tommies: The Courts Martial of Thirteen British Soldiers Executed for Murder During the First World War, Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2012, Chapter 12 passim; David Taylor, Policing the Victorian Town: The Development of the Police in Middlesbrough c. 1840–1914, Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, p. 179. For Collison’s Army career see http://www. corpsofmilitarypolice.org (19 February 2019). 8.  National Army Museum, Archive Accession 16 May 2007, Diary of Sergeant James Walmsley. For the disorderliness of the Australians see, inter alia, Peter Stanley, Bad Characters: Sex, Crime, Mutiny, Murder and the Australian Imperial Force, MillersPoint, NSW: Murdoch Books, 2010. 9.  Gerard Christopher Oram, Military Executions During World War I, Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp. 120, 135. 10.  Manchester Guardian, 11 September 1916, p. 7. 11.  Times, 21 February 1917, p. 4. 12.  Daily Mirror, 10 October 1918, p. 2. 13.  Daily Mirror, 29 June 1918, p. 2. 14. Clive Emsley, Soldier, Sailor, Beggarman, Thief: Crime and the British Armed Services Since 1914, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 61. 15.  Daily Express, 1 February 1916, p. 5 and 3 February 1916, p. 5. 16. Douglas Gill and Gloden Dallas, “Mutiny at Etaples in 1917”, Past and Present, No. 69, 1975, pp. 88–112.

32  C. EMSLEY 17. The National Archives, WO 95/4042. 18.  Daily Express, 3 February 1916, p. 4. 19. Gary Sheffield, The Redcaps, p. 88. 20. Clive Emsley, Soldier, Sailor, Beggarman, Thief, pp. 53–54. Field Punishment No. 1, often referred to by soldiers as “crucifixion”, involved an offender being tied with his arms outstretched to something like a waggon or an artillery limber. Troops hated it as a means of punishment and, during the First World War, many were uncomfortable about their allies witnessing such. A scandal in 1917 led to a reconsideration of the punishment and better regulation. It was abolished shortly after the war, see Clive Emsley, “Why Crucify Tommy?” History Today, November 2012, pp. 29–35. 21. Manchester Guardian, 19 August 1915, p. 10. 22. Manchester Guardian, 15 September 1915, p. 8; Times, 15 September 1915, p. 4. 23.  Times, 28 February 1916, p. 5. 24.  Aldershot News, 21 April 1916, p. 6; 12 May 1916, p. 3; 19 May 1916, p. 3; and 23 June 1916, p. 3. 25. Brotherton Library, University of Leeds, Liddle Collection, EP 015. 26. Clive Emsley, Soldier, Sailor, Beggarman, Thief, pp. 41–42, 97–98. 27.  Parliamentary Papers 1920 [Cmd. 574] Report of the Committee of the Police Service, England, Wales and Scotland, Part Two, p. 543.

CHAPTER 3

Was There a “Lotharingian Axis”? Belgian, French, and Italian Military Policing During the First World War: A Study in Comparative History Louis N. Panel

Law enforcement in the military, military judicial police work and the policing of troops at the front and the rear have recently been explored in the cultural and social history perspective of the Great War.1 Research work conducted for various countries has revealed similar concerns among all belligerents but also distinctive nuances for countries invaded by the Central Powers and, in particular, between countries implementing conscription and those with only fighting volunteers. However, forces employed to fulfil such duties have only scarcely been approached comparatively.2 On both sides of the conflict, many forces existed for which, in peacetime, civil and indeed military policing assignments had been affected. Among the Central Powers, for instance, the Turkish Jandarma had been created in the

L. N. Panel (*)  French Ministry of Culture, Strasbourg, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_3

33

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nineteenth century after the French–Italian model and reformed by advisors from these two countries as part of an international mission (1904–1914). Likewise, Austria–Hungary had invested its Imperial and Royal Gendarmerie, operating since the mid-nineteenth century, with both civil and military law enforcement missions. As for the Allies, several states like Portugal, Serbia and Romania also used Napoleon’s recommended system, exported all over Europe in the wake of his victories, “de surveillance moitié civile, moitié militaire, répandue sur toute la surface” (half civilian and half military surveillance, covering the full surface).3 For three of the Allied powers, recent scholarship allows us to formulate comparative hypotheses.4 Fighting together in the conflict, Belgium, Italy and France used military police forces with similar historical, legal and numerical characteristics. Facing comparable challenges, sometimes in the same theatres of operation, such forces did not share the same fate during the war and in its aftermath—differentiated changes affected their structures and representations. Yet does this render impossible the outlining of a “Lotharingian axis”, linking the military policing approaches of Brussels, Paris and Rome between 1914 and 1918?

Sister Institutions? The similarity existing between the three forces is first and foremost a product of history since the three institutions were born in the same short-lived period of the French Revolution followed by France’s Empire of 130 départements.5 Created on the foundations of the former maréchaussées (royal constabulary forces), by a law dated 16 February 1791, the French Gendarmerie was extended as early as 1795 to the nine Belgian départements where local companies were deployed (one for each). From 1802 onwards, the same process was applied to the Italian peninsula. These forces survived the downfall of the Empire, being consolidated in Piedmont-Sardinia as the Arma dei Carabinieri—instituted by letters patent, dated 13 July 1814—and surviving in the Kingdom of the Netherlands under the name Koninklijke Marechaussee (created by royal decree, dated 26 October 1814). As noted by Major Moreau (a French officer sent on a mission to study Italian forces a century later), the similarities remained striking— much more so than the linguistic and cultural differences he initially encountered: “The dispositions of the general regulations enacted in 1912 governing the carabinieri remind us – sometimes vividly – of the

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dispositions of our own decree dated 20 May 1903. Italian legislators obviously took their inspiration from the Germinal Year VI [March–April 1798] law”.6 Besides, if the three institutions were still comparable in 1914, this was also because of their development along parallel lines. All three served parliamentary regimes in countries implementing conscription. All three maintained and developed the principle, inherited from the Ancien Régime, of geographical framing, that is, relying on a regular network of brigades (Italian stazioni) to cover every area, foster the penetration of the state and bolster national unity. Their staff numbers were equally similar in terms of their ratio to the overall population: 0.5% in Belgium, 0.6% in France and 0.7% in Italy. Such close kinship encouraged the three forces to establish between them a number of functional ties that barely existed with their other neighbours. Between the French and Belgian Gendarmeries, this cooperation was essentially due to their very extensive, and mostly unmarked, common land border.7 From 1900, institutional exchanges were also explored between France and Italy. The first French school for Gendarmerie officers, for instance, created in the Schomberg barracks in Paris in 1901 to ensure training of promoted non-commissioned officers (NCOs), was only a copy of the Scuola per marescialli d’alloggio aspirant al grado di sottotenente, created in Turin in 1884.8 When the latter was reformed in 1906, to become a full-fledged school for all student officers, it was immediately visited by a French delegation and later served as a model for the Versailles school created in 1918.9 At the beginning of the twentieth century, the two forces also cooperated beyond their respective borders. Inter-Allied missions in Crete, then in Macedonia, gave Italian and French officers the opportunity to perform their duties in a joint operational context.10 In those territories, the complementarity between gendarmes and carabinieri proved to be close, if not always perfect, as witnessed by the overall command first given to Italian general Degiorgis, and then in 1911, to his French second-in-command, General Vérand.11

Three Gendarmerie Forces at War During the First World War, this close parentage was borne in mind by senior officers who, like French commanders, often talked of “sister forces”. It was also tangible for contemporaries, who easily

36  L. N. PANEL

identified similarities in uniforms. The bicorn (cocked hat) worn by the carabinieri, even in the army, could not fail to recall the model worn by French gendarmes, until phased out in 1904; the traditional colours of Belgian gendarmes were also the same as the carabinieri’s colours: dark blue and red (assorted with white aiguillettes and clover-shaped epaulettes in full dress). With the exception of a different headdress, the three uniforms were still easily confused in 1915. In all three countries, gendarmes and carabinieri were the kingpins of a mobilisation, which was recognised as a logistical feat; the French and Belgian gendarmes, who had been preparing secretly and effectively before the war, managed to do it rapidly when time came.12 Entrusted with similar responsibilities, such as the policing of troops, law enforcement in the military, the hounding of spies and deserters and the control of prisoners of war, the three forces logically came to establish closer ties in their military capacity. Due to the lack of an inter-Allied general staff, prior to the appointment of General Foch as generalissimo for the Western Front on 26 March 1918, cooperation had to be organised from within the lower ranks.13 Initially, respective commanders on the French front began to exchange their provost officers. However, this coordination derived from a mere presence in the same theatre, of armies ruled by different regulations and hierarchies, did not happen without difficulties regarding allies who did not follow Napoleon’s recommended principle of “special organisation”, granting autonomy to the Gendarmerie. Only briefly suggested for Portuguese troops by the General Inspector of Army Gendarmerie (Inspecteur général de la gendarmerie aux armées),14 and implemented after much debate with British provost marshals, this cooperation did not really materialise among American units until 1918.15 Owing to reduced linguistic but also intellectual barriers, cooperation was quicker and much easier with Belgian and Italian “sister forces”. Regarding the Belgian case and given the fact that most Belgian troops fighting in France were gathered in the fortified area of Dunkirk, commanders were able to establish joint provost patrols policing both French and Belgian troops indifferently. Although mainly repressive, their action was no more specifically challenged by soldiers than that of standard patrols. Still tensions arose from the fact that such patrols were, for ­obvious reasons, mainly French-speaking. Hence the unexpected forms of reproach formulated against a patrol which, on New Year’s Eve, came

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across “a dozen Belgian soldiers in a state of inebriation”; instead of taunting the provosts as shirkers, the soldiers reacted as follows: [having been told] that their dress was unkempt, that they should let young women pass freely and they should return to their quarters, the aforesaid soldiers became hostile, surrounded the provosts and began uttering threats: ‘Speak Flemish, you French bastard! You’ve got nothing to do with us!’16

The forms of cooperation practised between gendarmes and carabinieri until the summer of 1914 in Turkey were soon revived on the occasion of the Dardanelles expedition, and later on in the Salonika Front.17 Such cooperation continued on the Western Front in 1917, when France and Italy exchanged whole army corps, together with their provosts. During the same time period, Captain Dubois was sent to Rome at the head of a special Gendarmerie detachment posted with French forces in Italy. Dedicated to the supervision of French troops on Allied territory and to the prevention of “desertions to a friendly side”, this unit dealt with the transportation and policing of troops passing through Italy on their way to, or back from, the French Oriental Expeditionary Corps. Initially composed of a captain and 50 NCOs and gendarmes, its numbers had doubled a year later. In Rome—a strategic hub where general headquarters were located and through which numerous units had to transit—two fixed French Gendarmerie brigades were created (operating within the Termini and Trastevere railway stations) together with two so-called “support” mobile brigades. In total, these units oversaw the transit of more than 500,000 soldiers. Italian authorities meanwhile continued to exert their prerogatives over these men and Captain Dubois was also given a “semi-diplomatic” mission.18 In practical terms, these diverse forms of collaboration created a continuum lasting into the war. Captain Dellezay, provost of the 2nd Italian Corps deployed in France, was still a member of the inter-Allied mission in charge of reorganising the Ottoman Gendarmerie when he was mobilised and called back to France in August 1914—from where he was sent back to the general staff of the Eastern Expeditionary Corps, and finally posted as provost with the 2nd Regiment of Chasseurs d’Afrique (a French cavalry unit recruited in the colonies of North Africa, mainly among colonists).19 When demobilised, he joined the Army of

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the Levant.20 This example is typical of a number of careers that took on with an “international” profile emerging during the war: thus the inventory of all Italian-speaking gendarmes is carried out in May 1919 to incite them to volunteer and join the Italian detachment. Sixteen of them, from all military regions, thus went to Italy on 23 June.21 Some of them would be redirected in 1920 to the Inter-Allied Occupation Corps in Constantinople.22

Sharply Contrasting Images The exploration of similitudes and later “interpenetrations” between those three military police forces raises the following question, debated in the aftermath of the war: Why was the retrospective public image of each force so different in their respective countries, despite their similar ordeals? In France as in Italy, nearly 3000 mobilised provosts were quickly overwhelmed with much larger numbers being required; by the end of 1918, 18,500 career gendarmes and three quarters of Gendarmerie officers had actually served with the army. In Italy, 19,500 carabinieri performed military police duties. Since Italy entered the war in 1915 and mobilised forces represented only approximately two-thirds of French forces,23 “provost pressure” in Italy was significantly higher than in France where there was only 1 gendarme for every 1000 soldiers. Italian provosts were therefore proportionally more numerous than their French counterparts—and more efficient: there were some 93,000 deserters arrested in Italy (against probably 90,000 in France). Italy was also the European country where military justice, a logical extension of military police activity, was most stringent.24 Such facts lead us to a paradox: How should we account for the absence in Belgium and Italy of an equivalent negative image to the one attached to French provosts, at least in the public sphere? As early as 1920, King Albert I granted the Belgian Gendarmerie an official flag with the inscription “1914–1918”. In Italy, the gold medal of military valour, the highest combat distinction, was awarded to the Arma—with an explicit reference to its action during the conflict. Such precedents, though invoked as exemplary, were never echoed in France. The flag given to the Gendarmerie in 1913 was awarded the Légion d’honneur in 1928 but almost in secrecy and without any reference to recent service— so much so that the force felt frustrated and even attempted contorted explanations for this unusual discretion.25

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This marked difference in terms of public image from one country to another does not seem to be related to the level of casualties. Indeed, though relatively higher in Belgium (297 dead for 4238 men, i.e. around 7% of active gendarmes), this level was nearly similar in France (880 for 25,000 metropolitan gendarmes, i.e. 3.5%) and Italy (1400 for 30,000 carabinieri, i.e. 4.6%). The discredit affecting the French Gendarmerie— very strong in the Interwar Years and obviously out of scale with the Belgian and Italian situations—was therefore occasioned by something else.26 The most obvious hypothesis, which French commanders in particular adopted in the immediate aftermath of the war, would be linked to the different modes of involvement of the three forces, that is, support versus combat missions. From the outset, mobilisation of the Arma included the creation of a combat regiment—the Reggimento Carabinieri mobilitato. They fought under a specific uniform with grenade insignia. As early as the first battle of the Isonzo (there were 12 in total), this regiment fought with valour on Mount Podgora where 206 carabinieri were killed or wounded in a single day (19 July 1915).27 This first episode might easily explain the absence of any later challenge to the legitimacy of the Italian force as genuine combatants.28 This initial feat of arms even took on a symbolic value, to the point where hints of envy could be discerned in the martyrology imagined by French gendarmes to teach their comrades about the battle: “Mount Podgora was called the Calvary of the carabinieri”.29 For its own part, the French Gendarmerie certainly had a record of combat engagement, but it was a record that could not compete with the Arma dei Carabinieri. During the conflict 850 gendarmes were posted to combat units (compared to 7000 carabinieri). They mostly went unnoticed due to their dispersal across more than a hundred regiments, compounded by the fact they did not wear specific uniforms. While French gendarmes did request the creation of a combat unit, with its own flag and uniform, claiming that “with only one battalion or squadron, the principle would be established and our honour would be intact”, it is striking to notice that they failed to invoke a similar response to the Italian example.30 In the highly symbolic case of pilots, a comparison of numbers also seems unimpressive: whereas some 180 carabinieri were trained, often in France and to fly French aeroplanes, there were only 17 gendarmes incorporated into the French air force—some of these undertook ground duties.31 Rare reactions from public opinion to such gendarmerie involvement were usually sarcastic.32

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In contrast, the issue of creating a fighting unit within the Belgian gendarmerie was not even a matter of debate. As a military force dedicated to the protection of civilians, among other tasks, it necessarily took part in defensive combat and the kingdom’s brigades fought bravely right from the very first days of the war. Their sacrifice was incarnated in a number of heroic figures—gendarmes Bouko and Thill—the first Belgians to be killed in action on 4 August 1914 and Captain Frémault, the gallant commander of the cyclist detachment deployed near Ghent in October of the same year. But then what about the similar feats of Captain Brosse and his men, who were left alone to engage the enemy on their border district of Briey (as early as 2 August 1914); what about the distinguished brigades of Fresnes-en-Woëvre and Herbeuville; what about the Arras detachment later decorated for its action of harassment in October? These truly mirrored the Belgian case, but found no echo.33 The discrepancy in being publicly recognised between the Belgian, French and Italian military police forces may therefore have political derivation. In fact, the image of military police forces involved in the Great War was not truly formed during the conflict, but rather after it had ended. In France, the changing nature of public opinion as events unfolded, and the ambivalence shown towards the purpose and function of the Gendarmerie, both generally as well as within the army, prevented the emergence of any monolithic vision. Besides, censorship before 1917 was not very interested in protecting the respect, representation and physical integrity of gendarmes; as it became more stringent on these issues, its action fostered a kaleidoscope of representations leading to an ultimately balanced view of the Gendarmerie. Yet this balanced view was also ambivalent; sometimes considered a propitiatory figure—a rare and valuable resource when the front line shifted and interior security was challenged, the gendarme also became an expiatory figure when the stalemate set in—this representation of an isolated, small and therefore weak minority became an easy target.34 The latter figure prevailed during the Interwar Years. The “dark myth” surrounding French gendarmes at war first appeared in the world of the anciens combattants (veterans). Among former fighting men, Verdun emerged as a metonymy for the whole war and provosts became synonymous with the whole Gendarmerie corps—its repressive action itself becoming the sum total of its involvement. A number of

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stereotypes were then forged and helped to cement the community of veterans that were fairly divided at the time. The legend of gendarmes hanged by soldiers in Verdun, slowly sliding from a war memory into the territory of the collective imagination, is the most striking example of this process.35 The fact that there was no equivalent in Belgium or Italy does not demonstrate the absence of any resentment towards the carabinieri neri and other piottepakers.36 But in the 1930s, as public opinion expressed for the most part the feeling of that generation who had experienced the trenches, the French government was reluctant to laud publicly the deeds of “its” Gendarmerie in the course of the war. Its embarrassment was palpable when from 1927 to 1938 it wavered on the issue of granting to gendarmes the carte du combattant (veteran benefits card) or when it had to apportion blame after the riot of 6 February 1934. While truly promoting the Gendarmerie corps in the Interwar Years, in material as well as legal terms, the Third Republic remained reluctant to support its former wartime provosts.

Conclusions In the same period—though for almost opposite reasons—, remembrance of the royal provosts and carabinieri was rather encouraged by respective states. The aftermath of the war, in all three countries, had demonstrated the value of a civilian-cum-military police force to manage return to peace. In Belgium, the political and administrative reinvestment of national territory, that began in October 1918, largely relied on the Gendarmerie. In Italy, brigades still provided an excellent network for the management of borders that were barely made secure by the Treaty of Locarno; during the 1919–1921 crisis, resulting from demobilisation creating more acute unrest than in France, 41 carabinieri were killed as the Arma almost became the state’s insurance policy against revolutionary tensions—from the “Fiume Affair” to the short-lived soviets of Florence. After his accession to power, Mussolini himself declared that “all fascists must know that the Arma dei Carabinieri is one of the pillars of the regime”.37 Rather than studying exchanges and anticipated similarities in war involvement, the value of any comparative attempt may instead lie in an exploration of the reasons behind the starkly different reflections we see from these three sister forces.

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Notes









1. The issue of military police systems is actually left aside in André Loez and Nicolas Mariot (eds.), Obéir/désobéir. Les mutineries de 1917 en perspective, Paris: La Découverte, 2008. 2. A remarkable survey, although one that merely touches on the First World War, is available from Arnaud-Dominique Houte and Jean-Noël Luc (eds.), Les Gendarmeries dans le monde de la Révolution française à nos jours, Paris: Presses de l’université Paris-Sorbonne, 2016. 3. Letter from Napoleon I to his brother Joseph, King of Naples, 16 May 1806. 4.  Works by Flavio Carbone and Jonas Campion have indeed nurtured numerous comparative efforts, together with the results of my own research. 5. Aurélien Lignereux, Servir Napoléon. Policiers et gendarmes dans les départements annexés (1796–1814), Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2012. 6. Major (Chef d’escadron) Moreau, “Une arme d’élite. Les Carabiniers Royaux Italiens”, Revue de la Gendarmerie, No. 39, May 1934, p. 340. 7. On the subject of Gendarmerie activity along the Flemish border in the nineteenth century, see Arnaud-Dominique Houte, Gendarmes et gendarmerie dans le département du Nord (1814–1852), Paris: Phénix, 2000 and “Le migrant du gendarme. Le quotidien de la surveillance dans le département du Nord pendant la première moitié du xixe siècle”, in MarieClaude Blanc-Chaléard, Caroline Douki, and Nicole Dyone (eds.), Police et migrants, Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2001, pp. 235–249. 8. Flavio Carbone, “Dalla Scuola ‘di esperienza’ ai corsi per futuri ufficiali”, in Rassegna dell’Arma dei Carabinieri, 2004, pp. 71–88 and Gli Ufficiali dei Carabinieri Reali tra reclutamento e formazione (1823–1926), Soveria Manelli: Rubbettino, 2013, p. 125. 9. François Alègre de la Soujeole and Benoît Haberbusch (eds.), L’EOGN, une grande école militaire au service de la nation, Paris: SPE Barthélémy, 2017. Paradoxically, the first European trainees to join the school came from more distant institutions: a Persian officer attended classes at the Schomberg barracks in 1913–1914, followed, later in Versailles, by a Swiss in 1920–1921. Obvious similarities between Belgian, French and Italian training methods may explain this absence of exchange, that is, making an exchange pointless. 10. Jean-Marie Delaroche, La Gendarmerie crétoise et les Européens pendant l’occupation internationale (1896–1907), MA thesis (Paris X University), 2006, and La Gendarmerie macédonienne et les Européens pendant le statut spécial des trois vilayets (1903–1908): organisation, activités et enjeux politiques, MA thesis (École pratique des hautes études), 2009.

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43

11. Charles Vérand, Souvenirs de Macédoine, typewritten MS, 1912, Musée de la Gendarmerie (Melun, France). 12. Daniele Cellamare, “La preparazione e la mobilitazione generale dell’esercito italiano all’inizio della prima guerra mondiale”, Rassegna dell’arma dei Carabinieri, Vol. LIV, 2006, pp. 77–99; Louis N. Panel, “‘L’énorme machine’: la gendarmerie et la mobilisation en 1914”, in Jean-Noël Luc (ed.), Soldats de la loi. La gendarmerie au XXe siècle, Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2010, pp. 65–76; Jonas Campion, “Militaires, prévôts et policiers: les multiples tâches des gendarmes belges autour de la Grande Guerre”, Revue de la Gendarmerie nationale, No. 252, 2015, p. 54. 13. Captain Bontemps was appointed as Gendarmerie representative at the general staff. Yet in practice, his service consisted more of organizing guards of honour and providing the personal security of the Commanderin-Chief than in promoting inter-Allied Gendarmerie cooperation; this was in fact already taken care of on the Western Front by the Inspection générale de la gendarmerie aux armées (General Army Gendarmerie Inspectorate). See his personal military record, Dossier matricule d’Adolphe Bontemps (1869–1928), Service historique de la Défense [hereinafter SHD], 11 Yf 8271. 14. Lettre from General Bouchez, dated 18 May 1918. SHD, 16 N 272. 15. André Rakoto, “Les prévôtés françaises près des unités américaines (1917– 1919)”, Revue historique des armées, No. 213, 1998, pp. 50–60. 16. Official report dated 1 January 1917 from the Military Provost station of the 36th Army Corps and Dunkirk fortified region, SHD, 16 N 2863. 17. Isabelle Roy, La Gendarmerie en Macédoine, Maisons-Alfort: SHGN, 2004. 18. Gendarmerie Detachment of French forces in Italy, JMO (1917–1920). SHD, 26 N 18. 19.  Order No. 92 from the general Commander-in-Chief, dated 19 May 1918. SHD, 18 N 10. 20. Dossier matricule de Pierre Dellezay (1883–1966). SHD, 8 Ye 21 229. 21.  General Army Gendarmerie Inspectorate report, dated 23 June 1919. SHD, 16 N 191, register 4. 22.  Eugène Balley, “La police interalliée de Constantinople”, Revue de la Gendarmerie, No. 35, 1933, p. 649. 23. Filippo Cappellano, “Les relations entre les armées italienne et française pendant la Grande Guerre”, Revue historique des armées, No. 250, 2008, pp. 53–65. 24. For a comparative study of numbers—often debated—between the military justice systems of Europe, see first Nicolas Offenstadt, Les Fusillés de la Grande Guerre et la mémoire collective (1914–2009), Paris: Odile Jacob, 2009, p. 21. See also Jean-Marc Berlière, Jonas Campion,

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Luigi Lacchè, and Xavier Rousseaux (eds.), Justices militaires et guerres mondiales (1914–1950), Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 2014. 25. Auguste Schilte, “La croix du drapeau”, Revue de la Gendarmerie, No. 16, 1930, p. 587. At the same time, the committee created by a private association to erect a monument “to the glory of the Gendarmerie” also tried to force the hand of public authority by causing it to be inscribed, on top of battles officially listed on Gendarmerie emblems, with a “Great War 1914–1918” summary mention. 26. Louis N. Panel, “La Gendarmerie nationale et l’affaire de la carte du combattant: histoire d’un malentendu”, Force publique, No. 1, 2006, ­ pp. 59–72. 27. Flavio Carbone, “Les carabiniers italiens dans la Grande Guerre: arme combattante et force de l’ordre”, Revue de la Gendarmerie nationale, No. 252, 2015, p. 44. 28. Giuliano Ferrari, “La Polizia militare. Profili storici, giuridici e d’impiego”, Rassegna dell’Arma dei carabinieri, April 1993, p. 107, highlights the battle of Mount Podgora as incontrovertible proof of the link between the natural authority of a military police force and its combat duties. 29. Major (Chef d’escadron) Moreau, Revue de la Gendarmerie, No. 39, May 1934, p. 340. 30. Georges Lélu, Grand livre d’Or historique de la gendarmerie nationale, Beaune: Girard, 1939, p. 119. 31. Salomé Krékounian, “Gendarmes et combattants du ciel”, Revue de la Gendarmerie nationale, No. 252, March 2015, pp. 99–104, notices among them the cases of at least one mechanic and one general staff secretary. 32. Ch. Vilpelle, “L’escadrille des six cognes”, Le mouchoir, No. 4, 1 July 1917, p. 3. 33.  These actions were only noticed in the internal records of the Gendarmerie, see for instance Ministère de la Guerre, Historique de la Gendarmerie. Guerre de 1914–1918, Paris: Charles-Lavauzelle, 1920. 34. Louis N. Panel, “Cognes, hommes noirs et grenades blanches: les enjeux de la représentation du gendarme dans la Grande Guerre”, Sociétés & représentations, No. 16, 2003, pp. 167–179. 35. Louis N. Panel, “Maintenir l’ordre sous le feu: La gendarmerie dans la bataille de Verdun (février–octobre 1916)”, Revue historique des armées, No. 242, March 2006, pp. 60–69. 36. Regarding the latter, see J. Campion’s contribution in this volume. 37.  Speech from the Italian President of the Council to the Chamber of Deputies (16 May 1927).

CHAPTER 4

Tracking the ‘Enemy Within’: Alcoholisation of the Troops, Excesses in Military Order and the French Gendarmerie During the First World War Stéphane Le Bras

In his testimony published in the late 1970s, Louis Barthas mentions soldiers on the Somme during the summer of 1916 being desperate to avoid the presence of the cognes1 who prevented them from foraging in the neighbouring villages. However, as he further explains, “this zeal to implement such stringent and absurd regulations irritated the soldiers so much that they formed gangs and went on to administer quite a few beatings using clubs on the backs of gendarmes”.2 Worse still, Barthas mentions a later incident when—as a result of similar military police inflexibility—two gendarmes were apparently assaulted, then hanged by the side of the road leading to a nearby village. Albeit reported as hearsay by the author, this sinister anecdote nonetheless mirrors the reality of numerous clashes between gendarmes and more or less inebriated soldiers. Military archives and personal accounts

S. Le Bras (*)  Clermont Auvergne University, Clermont-Ferrand, France © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_4

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are filled with tensions and quarrels3 between those entrusted by ­military regulations with law enforcement across military operational areas—the so-called Zone des armées—and soldiers whose drunken proclivities are now widely known and fully documented.4 By extension, comparable incidents also occurred away from the front, during leave periods5 or when quartered in barracks. For the most part, such forms of hostile behaviour can plainly be attributed to the massive consumption of wine and other alcoholic beverages by the poilus. To some extent, this took place with the assent of military authorities who actually included wine as part of daily rations; consumption was also encouraged via supply channels with official approval (supplementary rations, profiteering merchants, cooperatives, postal packages), not to mention illicit sources (looting, fraud and general foraging in ruins). As a result, Gendarmerie forces were confronted with several situations requiring their intervention. Under increasingly firm instructions to achieve greater control, investigations, monitoring of outlets and in flagrante arrests were carried out to combat such practices, the consequences of which were sometimes tragic.6 Gendarmes became a tool in the fight against the “alcoholisation” of both French and Allied military forces—as well as against all forms of related disorderly behaviour resulting from consumption (brawls or riots) or procuring alcohol (e.g., theft). As illustrated in the anecdote reported by Barthas, action from Gendarmerie forces, widely documented during the war, intended to achieve limitation, confinement or even full eradication of drunken behaviour, both collective and individual, contributed to a further degradation of their image among soldiers. As law enforcers, gendarmes thus suffered a wide number of negative and more or less lasting consequences, from general contempt and derogatory nicknames to physical assaults.7 In reality, gendarmes acting as provosts on the front line were only responding to a standard requirement of wartime operations: keeping fighting forces mobilised and united8 by quashing all transgressions of military order. With cohorts mainly drawn from conscription and having only recently been drafted, this regulatory dynamic was therefore bound to clash with its natural opposite—a dynamic of disruption fuelled by alcohol in multiple forms. Exploring this permanent fight against what soon became an “enemy within” must lead us to consider a number of specific issues; first, the practices, origins, consequences and perceptions of drunken behaviour

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among soldiers; second, measures taken against this problem—a real curse in times of war—and the part played in this effort by the French Gendarmerie. Doing so will enable us to consider more generally the place taken by the First World War in the wider history of alcohol consumption by the masses, its collective representations and its regulation by public authorities.

Alcoholisation in the Army: Fostering Disorder and Discontent The First World War marked a radical turning point in the socio-cultural history of practices related to alcohol consumption. Often wrongly presented as the moment when the entire French nation fell in love with wine, it was rather a decisive moment in the conceptualisation and promotion of temperance. Wines and Spirits at the Heart of the Poilu’s Daily Routine The mass consumption of alcohol on the front line, whether in the form of wine, spirits, cider, beer, etc., is widely documented as early as 1914. This resulted from several factors. The first is institutional: even before the conflict, France’s Supply Corps was instructed (April 1914) to supply each “bivouacked soldier”, that is, one posted in front line areas, with a daily ration of 0.25 L of wine and 0.0625 L of brandy9 (respectively equivalent to one third of a standard bottle and a very small flask). In the autumn, these rations were quickly extended to all soldiers present in the Zone des armées, that is, nearly 3 million men to be supplied daily.10 Allotted quantities of wine never ceased to increase during the whole conflict, either via the standard ration going up to 0.5 L in 1916, or via the allocation of supplementary rations paid on each unit’s mutual funds or bought cheaply from the Supply Corps.11 By 1918, the daily ration of a soldier thus reached nearly a full litre, to which must be added “exceptional” rations gifted by military authorities to celebrate an event and quantities bought from local supply channels (military canteens, front line merchants, the local population). Though it remains difficult to provide a precise evaluation of the average daily intake, given the available data, the figure was indisputably high—probably around 1.5 to 2 L of mostly poor-quality, and more importantly limited strength, wine (circa 8–9% alcohol content or even less if diluted—a common practice at the time).

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Other spirits were also widely consumed, including beer, cider and aperitifs. However, corresponding quantities never reached the levels recorded for wine; more difficult to obtain, less easy to preserve and more dependent on regional cultural practices, they were never likely to rival the prominence of wine, which soon became part of the identity of French soldiers, earning itself the universal slang nickname of pinard (plonk) as early as the end of 1914.12 It is therefore not surprising to notice regular mention of alcohol consumption in the mass of soldier testimonies. These testimonies allow us to grasp other factors at play, underpinning such practices. First and foremost, as underlined by Alexandre Lafon, consumption practices were imported from civilian life.13 Alcohol consumption, especially collective consumption among members of the same units, eased a soldier’s integration into their virile sociability—as confirmed by Roland Dorgelès who explained in Les Croix de bois that a sure sign of successful integration was achieved when “the newbie […] started to drink our pinard with pleasure”.14 One also drank wine purely to quench one’s thirst, all the more so since wine was easier to preserve than water, which needed to be sterilised and whose supply channels, including natural springs, could be contaminated by decaying corpses.15 Other drinks were also used to celebrate a promotion, the birth of a child or an exceptional event; champagne was of course served to all soldiers on New Year’s Day. A number of aperitif brands—household names at the time such as Byrrh or Dubonnet—were also used for celebratory purposes and their fame spread along the front line. A post-prandial outburst by Paul DuvalArnould narrating a meal with his captain in 1915 typifies this: “Oh Dubonnet! Dubonnet! I do not have the honour of your acquaintance, nor am I expecting any advantage from glorifying your divine beverage! But our meal was a chorus of praise addressed to you”.16 Yet drink was also a means to combat inner trouble or distress, including the famous cafard, a broad term using the image of a cockroach, its literal meaning, to refer to homesickness, the pain of losing one’s comrades or even boredom or despair. In his Crapouillots, the same Paul Duval-Arnould introduces one of the soldiers of his unit as follows: “a decent chap – but with a major flaw. He once got a bullet in the head. Now when it acts up, this bullet gives him the cafard; so to drown it, he drinks – and then let’s say he’s not an easy customer to handle”.17 Given this context, “just a little drink” would often lead to numerous forms of excess.

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All Kinds of Excesses Excess took many forms. Although they were mostly recorded in relation to festive circumstances, they largely emerged from the archives as a means of “letting off steam” to relieve permanent pressure from the conflict, especially on returning from a particularly trying ordeal. Frédéric Rousseau defines it as an “artificial shield”,18 however, it created numerous disruptions to military order, jeopardising not only the unity among soldiers required for victory but also their image in the eyes of civilian populations. From the early days of mobilisation, soldiers received massive quantities of wine gifted by local populations, with plenty of corresponding episodes of drunken soldiery on board transfer trains. In Lyon, in May 1915, Sergeant Maurice Berruyer mentions one of his comrades who “gave into his natural proclivity in honour of our departure. He then caused some disturbance and threatened our warrant officer right in the middle of the crowd at Perrache station; so we had to hand him over to military authority”.19 In Cahors, men of the 7th Infantry Regiment, as mentioned in a report, were blamed for having “caused a lot of racket in town [because] many men had drunk – as usual”, which could have been avoided if “the men were consigned to their barracks on the day of departure and prevented from drinking with excess in the canteen”.20 At the front, cases of drunken behaviour were also particularly frequent, especially on return from the trenches—as the Revue d’économie politique deplored in 1917: “When the soldier comes down from the trenches, there’s a little money in his pocket from higher pay and his combat allowance; he can therefore easily get drunk, especially since, most of the time, he doesn’t need much to do so” and since, at his cantonment, “he has many occasions to become inebriated”.21 Such statements are confirmed by soldiers’ direct testimonies, for example, Alphonse Gallienne described his arrival in a Lorraine village at the end of August 1914 stating, “it’s a real party, we can get anything we want here”, later mentioning the consequences of this, with plenty of men feeling “sick from drinking”.22 If several of the tales reported by Louis Barthas, Paul Duval-Arnould or Jules Jeanbernat are to be believed, such excess sometimes created a challenge to collective security; beyond frequent cases of drunken soldiers threatening their own comrades or risking to reveal their position to nearby enemies, numerous cases related to spying are noticeable: local civilians working for the Germans gave

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massive quantities of wine to soldiers in exchange for information or ­simply to cause them to lower their guard and neglect security.23 Finally, one must recall cases in which soldiers having consumed alcohol or trying to procure it became involved in delinquent behaviour, be it at the front, at their cantonments or in garrison towns. Corporal Henri Bury thus indicates in his diaries that “the town of Villeron was seriously afflicted by the French army who plundered everything […] it is shameful to see such things – and we hear the same story in every village that we go through”.24 To a large extent, such practices were related to what Jules Isaac calls “the Chasse au pinard”25 (hunting for plonk), forming a significant vector of tension with the local populations, as witnessed by formal complaints lodged by civilians throughout the conflict.26 Similarly, brawls were also numerous between soldiers, or even with civilians27 who often had to suffer the combined effects of drunkenness and peer pressure.28 Such incidents were not without consequences, especially since they promoted a negative image of the army at a time when national unity was a permanent core theme of official discourse. Hence the existence of stigmatisations on both sides. A Protean Anti-Alcoholic Discourse From the outset, temperance organisations were keen to alert the authorities to the phenomenon of drink-related disorderly excess, especially at the rear. A compendium of evidence entitled “Fighting alcoholism at the front (Zone des armées) and rear (Zone de l’intérieur), September 1914–July 1915” condemned the behaviour of drunken soldiers via numerous testimonies, unreferenced but supported by letters from the Ligue nationale contre l’alcoolisme (National Temperance League) or the workers’ monthly periodical for “social hygiene” La Pensée ouvrière (Organe mensuel illustré d’hygiène sociale et ouvrière). One provided a striking amount of detail: Reservists had drunk so heavily at the time of departure that in certain ­regiments the men arrived in a dreadful state. In the reception camp at one of our great naval bases [Rouen], it became permanently necessary to call on guards to intervene and tie up such men taken with fits of delirium tremens or mad rage caused by alcohol […]. There were even many who had to be tied down to their beds in order to be restrained. A young soldier assured me that in one single night, he had counted 100 men restrained in this way.29

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If this presentation seems excessive, it is nonetheless a valid reflection, supported by many other testimonies, of the degree of alcoholisation affecting part of the troops. This situation even moved France’s Academy of Medicine to signal “the likely advantage – at the present hour – to inspect all towns and areas of military residence […] to ensure i­ll-advised tolerance does not expose soldiers to the serious consequences of alcoholisation and drunkenness”.30 A year later and with the same perspective, the Société française d’action contre l’alcoolisme (French society for action against alcoholism) began publishing Le Bulletin de l’alarme, its “call to arms bulletin”, defining the fight against alcoholism as similar to the fight against the Germans, who were at that time portrayed as incarnations of drunkenness—with quotes and iconography to prove it.31 Debates on alcoholism in the army became a burning issue, notably among members of the Academy of Medicine, as witnessed in its proceedings from 1915.32 If the peril was properly understood, measures to be taken and products to be controlled were still the subject of multiple controversies. Within the army, moral condemnations were also numerous and in line with manuals intended to build the character of soldiers. In its 1914 edition, Félix Chapuis’ L’Instruction théorique du soldat par luimême (Self-taught Theoretical Instruction for Soldiers) recommended the following: “Whenever soldiers have the occasion to drink wine, beer, cider or other beverages, they must always be moderate and prove their understanding of moderation as a matter of hygiene and an invaluable quality”.33 Among soldiers, a number of testimonies take up similar arguments praising the necessity and honour of remaining sober, as for instance in Henri Barbusse’s Le Feu. While a brawl occurs in a barn right next to where Barbusse and his squad are sleeping, one of his men, Marthereau, proudly, comments: “But we’re not like them – we know how to behave! Thanks to Bertrand and his obsessive hate of alcoholism, that poisoned Nemesis playing havoc with the masses, our squad is one of the least infected by wine and the hooch”.34 Hence there was frequent disapproval, especially when drunken fellows disturbed sleep35 or acted with obvious excess, as indicated by Jean-Pierre Poutous, a soldier from the Landes region. In one of his letters home, he describes one of his comrades as follows: “Since last September, he must have drunk enough wine to drown [the lake of] Saint-Pée […] the way he laps it – it’s fearful”.36 Logically enough, most condemnations came for superiors, whether in direct contact with the troops like Lieutenant

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Marcel Étévé, “My Breton Le Botte behaves very badly: he cannot be in the cantonment without getting terribly drunk”,37 or posted at staff headquarters like General Humbert who reported in August 1916 that “the increasing number of outlets offering wine for immediate consumption undeniably endangers the discipline and health of our troops”.38 In total, while alcoholisation practices were recurrent among the troops, they were also duly blamed for their negative impact on discipline and unity, two fundamental requirements for any hope of victory. This explains why military authorities, acknowledging the concerns of temperance organisations, doctors and soldiers themselves, took measures to bring such excess under control.

Regulating, Monitoring and Arresting: Gendarmes at the Heart of the Tracking Process Faced with this not altogether unknown but remarkably new situation, forces of law and order were the necessary guarantors of a control and repression process that had multiple consequences. Military Authorities at Work In his already mentioned Instruction théorique du soldat par lui-même, Major Chapuis defined proper military behaviour as follows: In town, one should be well dressed, sport a proper attitude and walk casually. One must never smoke a pipe, walk with one’s hands in one’s pockets, loiter or engage conversation with low-life women; one must always be found polite, obliging and protective. A soldier must never enter brothels or establishments of ill repute; his proper place is in broad daylight. Military regulations forbid contracting of debts and prescribe ­ severe punishments for those infringing this rule.39

All the evidence at our disposal demonstrates that soldiers would regularly disregard such standards of military decency whenever inclined to have a drink or go on a spree. Considering the likely dangers entailed by tipsiness, even in its milder forms, in a front line context, it was hardly surprising to see military authorities react swiftly.

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First measures were isolated; taken on the initiative of local commanders and sometimes radical, their aim was to prevent any disruption at the front as well as the rear. As early as the autumn of 1914, orders were given in the Seine-et-Oise region—near Paris and at that time very close to the front line—“to curb the scourge”,40 that is, drunkenness affecting the fighting capacity of soldiers. In the 5th Army, General Franchet d’Espérey prohibited any purchase of alcoholic beverages by the military at the beginning of March 1915 and restricted the public sale of so-called “hygienic” beverages (wine, bier, cider, etc.) to only two, two-hour periods daily (10 a.m. to 12 p.m. and 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.).41 As Commanderin-Chief, Joffre confirmed this a week later: “In all armies, measures have been taken by commanding generals to the effect of restricting the sale and circulation of alcohol and alcoholic beverages”. Aiming to streamline practices which “differ in their modalities in accordance with each army”,42 the original prohibition was extended to the whole Zone des armées. Away from the front, the situation was identical. In the 10th Military Region (Brittany), General Vautier equally banned the selling of alcohol to stationed troops on account of “extremely frequent cases of drunkenness resulting in breaches of discipline”. In collaboration with the local Procureur de la République (public prosecutor) and the Prefect of Illeet-Vilaine, he signed a decree in June 2015 which, advertised by the local press at the end of the same month, banned the sale of any alcoholic beverage, other than so-called “hygienic” ones, to all soldiers within the territory of the 10th Military Region and imposed specific opening hours for all public outlets.43 In July, the military governor of Paris, General Gallieni, applied the same measure to the capital—then considered “a fortress under siege”.44 In October, a ministerial circular eventually endorsed all these decisions, thus banning the sale of alcohol to all soldiers mobilised at the front and the rear, or even posted in factories working for the war effort.45 Rationalisation of control was then pursued at a steady pace between 1915 and the end of the conflict, via some 40 successive regulatory instruments (orders, instructions and directives) governing the sale and circulation of alcohol in the Zone des armées.46 Now emanating from General Headquarters, working in cooperation with the public authorities,47 these regulations turned out to be more stringent by extending such a ban to soldiers on leave in February 1916,48 and by including

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wine too at end of the same year. Somehow tolerated until then, wine and the excesses it created were thus brought under control. By April 1916, any incident occurring in the Zone des armées could lead to forced closures of outlets, whatever the beverage being sold.49 In the following year, General Pétain commandeered surplus wine entering the Zone des armées.50 In August of the same year, the Ministry of War prohibited the sale of any alcoholic beverages, including wine, between 9.30 p.m. and 8 a.m. at all railway stations.51 In order to uphold such regulations, both military and civilian authorities logically required the intervention of law enforcement forces, these were mainly Gendarmerie forces. A Function with Distinct Levels of Action In peacetime, fighting excess related to immoderate inebriation formed part of regular Gendarmerie assignments; such excess was defined by a law, dated 23 January 1873, governing the repression of “public drunkenness”.52 This law was replaced by a further one, dated 1 October 1917, which was enacted right in the middle of the conflict, and made corresponding constraints, fines and penalties more stringent.53 Whether integrating military police units in the Zone des armées or remaining posted at the rear with their original status, gendarmes were indeed confronted with numerous cases of drunkenness or disorderly behaviour related to soldiers’ consumption of alcohol. Their role was clearly defined: enforcing the dispositions set out by the many official texts regulating the circulation, sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages. In traditional and very formal fashion, the April 1916 decree “purporting to the prohibition of opening new public houses for the consumption of beverages on the premises or sale and conveyance thereof” provided the following precision in its last article: “Art. III. Police commissaries [superintendents], mayors, Gendarmerie officers and all other law-enforcement agents shall be put in charge of enforcing the present decree”.54 In some cases, the word “provost” is specifically mentioned, for instance, in Art. 4 of General Franchet d’Espérey’s 1915 decree55: “the selling of hygienic beverages (wine, cider, beer, perry, mead, coffee, tea and other herbal beverages) to soldiers of all ranks shall be authorised in public houses only from 10 am to 12  pm and from 5 pm to 7 pm – subject to the strict monitoring of provosts”. Tasks assigned to gendarmes were therefore multiple: they had

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to record infringements and sanction them while also keeping a close watch on public houses. This extended their standard mission and plainly amounted to an overload of work which proved difficult to cope with given, especially at the front, their understaffed units with too few commanding officers. In this regard, a revealing entry in the diary of Captain Jules Allard, Chief Provost of the 18th Infantry Division, states that at the time of the outbreak of war, only 22 units (7 gendarmes on foot and 15 on horse)56 were available to him to ensure policing of a whole division numbering, at least theoretically, more than 15,000 men. This situation consequently made the fulfilment of their duties a formidable challenge, all the more so since the surveillance of outlets and the repression of drunkenness was only one special task to which they were assigned, added to which was the gathering of intelligence, criminal investigations, the hunt for spies and deserters, escorting prisoners (German or indeed French), controlling goods and individuals, etc.57 However, the crucial importance of their intervention remained twofold: ensuring the strict maintenance of law and order (a practical dimension) and keeping the French nation united (an ideological dimension). As a result, their intervention became indispensable to achieving a meaningful repression of drunkenness and related excess among soldiers, both in terms of recording infringements and establishing their exact circumstances. One example is a typical case from 1918 that took place in the Vosges region: two gendarmes on foot spotted the presence of two soldiers seated in an outlet outside of authorised hours; though there was no visible evidence of alcohol being consumed (the soldiers were only in conversation with the owner and later claimed to have forgotten about authorised hours), a report was nonetheless filed for infringement of the 19 July 1917 decree.58 More seriously, a few weeks later in a nearby village, two gendarmes discovered 18 military men drinking wine in an outlet that was supposed to have been out of bounds to troops since December 1917.59 There again, a report was duly filed. French gendarmes sometimes operated in collaboration with or on the indications of other forces; such was the case in Gérardmer in September 1918 when three American military police officers, having previously concealed their badges, obtained cognac from a local café. They reported this information to their captain who himself informed Provost Lambert, attached to the American 6th Infantry Division. Swooping on the premises, Lambert secured a confession from the owner after only a short investigation

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(though this was later retracted). Using his military powers of authority in this field60 the Provost then called for a “severe sanction” (especially since the establishment had already been closed three times prior).61 This action was intended to demonstrate to the American allies that the prohibition regulations extended to US soldiers posted in France were truly enforced as mandated by general staff instructions.62 Investigations in such cases were brief and successful. Yet some cases proved to be more complicated. In May 1918, a house owner of Crevecoeur in the Oise département went to the local Gendarmerie station to lodge a complaint against two soldiers having broken into his cellar with, he claimed, intent to steal beverages. A few weeks earlier in Breteuil, the cellar of a woman had been ransacked for wine and spirits as well as food and rabbits. Despite formal investigations by gendarmes, no charges were brought due to a lack of certainty as to intent in the first case, and an absence of clear identification of perpetrators in the second.63 However, when charges were brought punishment was exemplary. In 1916, a party of soldiers was accused of having stolen wine from a crumbling house in Verdun. The inquiry was swiftly conducted by Gendarmerie officer Royer and one of the soldiers, named Hanen, was charged with plunder in flagrante delicto and brought before the 2nd Army’s court martial who condemned him to two months imprisonment.64 Finally, in certain situations, civil and military justice proved to be complementary. Again, in the Oise département, a soldier was arrested in 1917 for drunk and disorderly behaviour on the streets of Creil. After a thorough inquiry by the local gendarmerie (interrogation of all witnesses to restrict the definition of charges to public drunkenness and verbal assault), the man was transferred, under supervision of provosts, to the remand prison of Senlis where he was detained at the disposal of the public prosecutor—the latter receiving “orientations” from the major general in command of the soldier’s division as to appropriate final charges and punishment.65 Similar procedures were followed at the rear and Gendarmerie activities were also properly supported, as witnessed in the files of soldiers who were court martialled for desertion, disobedience or breaches of the peace.66 Logically, this problematic positioning of gendarmes in an intermediary capacity directly led to a degradation of their relationships with soldiers, something in itself that contributed to the deterioration of their image.67

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Impaired Relations and Assaults If the example taken from Louis Barthas quoted in the introduction to this chapter might be construed as fiction, fed by daily rumours haunting the trenches, tunnels or cantonments,68 the situation it mirrors remains highly representative of real tensions affecting the social bond between soldiers and gendarmes during the conflict, a phenomenon in which the fight for temperance played a fundamental role. At the front as well as the rear, gendarmes often found themselves involved in clashes when trying to arrest, or simply calm, soldiers. In February 1916, the 24th Colonial Infantry Regiment left its barracks in Perpignan to march to the railway station where a train was due to transfer them to the front.69 However, some of the men were unhappy about this return to combat duties and, as one report states, “many were drunk and nearly all of them hollering”; then a gun was fired, forcing gendarmes to intervene to arrest the culprit, who subsequently rebelled against them. This unit was infamous for its lack of discipline, and the four gendarmes involved had been appointed by the colonel in command “to ensure proper policing and respect towards civilians in and around the station”. Once this soldier was restrained, gendarmes had to supervise the boarding of train carriages “partly by force, partly using persuasion” and make sure his “overexcited” and inebriated comrades were duly shipped off. During a later stop at Béziers, new incidents broke out: a soldier picked a quarrel with a gendarme, insulted him, grabbed him by the collar and tried to take his gun; as the train left the station again, general insults were thrown at the stationmaster, at commissioned officers and at other gendarmes. This story is particularly revealing and demonstrates how gendarmerie officers, beyond their mere involvement in punch-ups between soldiers, were also lumped together with superior officers as natural targets for invectives. Together with a tenacious distrust of law enforcement forces that already existed in peacetime, their relational ambivalence towards soldiers—both are groups involved in winning the war but one is overseeing the other one—explains to some extent the sharp animosity that sometimes surfaced during interactions between the two groups. Military records therefore provide frequent instances of clashes, threats and insults aimed towards gendarmes perceived as shirkers and traitors. For example, a gunner by the name of Courcol, from the 6th Army, was court martialled for “provocation” in 1916.70 The indictment against him informs us that in the early afternoon of 23 January 1916,

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the sergeant of his unit found him drinking in a café instead of f­ulfilling his duties (grooming horses); the sergeant scolded him and reported the incident to the lieutenant in command. A few hours later, keen on revenge, Courcol described as an “inveterate drunkard” and now “in state of intoxication”, encouraged a colonial infantry soldier to punch a gendarme who had summoned them. Hit in the face, the man lost a tooth while a fellow gendarme, having rushed to his rescue, was also kicked. Courcol was sentenced to immediate imprisonment. Far removed from the front, in Algiers, chasseur Royer was involved in a similar case. While instructed to stand guard at the entrance of his cantonment, he became inebriated and aggressive towards an employee of the local postal services, with whom certain buildings were shared. When a sergeant—a gendarmerie officer—ordered him to allow this employee to enter, Royer answered with taunts, then pointed his rifle at him before three other gendarmes intervened and managed to restrain him. Once tied up, Royer went on insulting the sergeant having reproved his behaviour. He was sentenced to a year in prison.71 Finally, tensions were also frequent in relation to the monitoring of outlets, mainly on account of the stringent approach taken by gendarmes in charge of such surveillance operations. Assigned to military police, this task was carried out by gendarmerie privates under the supervision of non-commissioned officers (NCOs) with previous civilian experience in similar investigations. As revealed in 1917 by a service circular from the headquarters of the 1st Army, four NCOs were affected to this monitoring because of their profession, all of them former tax inspectors72 who were well versed in conducting inquiries and drafting reports. Though duly trained at the headquarters of the division d’étape (staging posts and logistical services), and having been reminded that their function required “a measure of tactful understanding”,73 such men soon gained a reputation for inflexibility74 and excessive pride in their status. Under such circumstances, nicknames thrown at gendarmes logically reflected a depreciation of their identity and the angry or even violent nature of relationships between gendarmes and soldiers. Such nicknames were sometimes old ones (e.g., cognes [thrashers] from Provencal cagne [bitch] and/ or the verb cogner [to hit violently], and bourres from bourrer [to pummel]) or inventive new ones: les enfants de chœur de Deibler (Deibler’s choirboys—from the name of a famous family of public executioners), or in the same vein les hirondelles de potence (swallows of the gallows).75

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Conclusions Ultimately, gendarmes clearly appear to have played a fundamental role in the fight against the alcohol-related excess that challenged wartime order (under the guidance of military authorities who were aware of the dangers of alcohol as early as 1915, including the dangers of wine, duly targeted from 1916 onwards). Their intervention was rendered necessary by the constant need for able-bodied men to fight in what was then a total war, where controlling the public image of soldiers, both at the front and the rear, was undoubtedly a relevant factor. In this context, it became primordial to quell the excesses and disorderly behaviour of soldiers infringing common decency and military discipline as a result of alcohol. Given multiple assignments, gendarmes ensured control and repression in various fields. A chief role being to track the “enemy within”, identified by temperance societies; this was not without consequences and their relationships with troops suffered; as early as 1914 tensions existed. A reputation for rigidity, treacherous tactics, subservience to superiors and the undue enjoyment of privilege soon stuck—something that was aptly summarised by private Tulacque in Le Feu: “You should see them […] how they build their little nests in our cantonments – going straight to where there’s plenty of food and comfort; and when their own plonk supplies are neatly secured,76 they go hunting for our clandestine outlets. You’ll see them lurking around, always with their sneaky eyes on the doors of kasbahs [slang for houses] to check if there’s a poilu discreetly coming out, licking his lips and looking left and right”.77 While Tulacque’s trenchant views then lead to an open debate among his squad comrades, this tirade is significant inasmuch as its arguments against gendarmes focus solely on the consumption of alcohol and the monitoring of outlets. Thereby, and with a need for further exploration (an examination of profiles of gendarmes involved in this type of policing or the real extent of their power), we can note that multiple issues in this subject remain complex, often being fundamentally based on the antagonistic concerns—and needs—of troops and authorities.

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Notes







1. A highly pejorative nickname (“thrashers”) given to gendarmes since the beginning of the nineteenth century. 2. Louis Barthas, Les carnets de guerre de L. Barthas, tonnelier, Paris: F. Maspero, 1978, pp. 350–351. 3. See for instance narratives by Maurice Genevoix (Ceux de 14) or Roland Dorgelès (Les Croix de bois). 4.  On this particular subject, see Thierry Fillaut’s “La lutte contre l’alcoolisme dans l’armée pendant la Grande Guerre: principes, méthodes et résultats”, in Laurence Guignard, Hervé Guillemain, and Stéphane Tison (eds.), Expériences de la folie. Criminels, soldats, patients en psychiatrie (XIX–XXème siècles), Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2013, pp. 141–152, or François Cochet’s “1914–1918: L’alcool aux armées. Représentations et essai de typologie”, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, No. 222/2, 2006, pp. 19–32. See also Charles Ridel’s recent L’Ivresse du soldat. L’alcool dans les tranchées, Paris: Vendémiaire, 2016. 5. See, for example, Emmanuelle Cronier, Permissionnaires dans la Grande Guerre, Paris: Belin, 2013. 6. For a very detailed case study, see Marie-Laure Féry, Prévôté et lutte contre l’alcoolisme dans le Groupe d’armées du Nord pendant la Grande Guerre, MA thesis (Paris-Sorbonne University), 2000. 7. On this subject, see “La légende noire, ou l’offensive des lieux communs” in Louis N. Panel, La Grande Guerre des gendarmes, Paris: NouveauMonde, 2013, p. 531 sq. 8. Louis N. Panel, “‘L’énorme machine’: la gendarmerie et la mobilisation en 1914”, in Jean-Noël Luc (ed.), Soldats de la loi. La Gendarmerie au XXe siècle, Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2010, pp. 65–75. 9. Official Bulletin of the Ministry of War, Alimentation en Campagne, Paris: Charles-Lavauzelle, 2 April 1914, p. 64. 10. French Senate Archives, 69 S 119, Rapport fait à la commission de l’armée sur le ravitaillement des armées en vin by M. André Lebert, November 1916, p. 3. 11. This compares with the average yearly consumption of wine in France estimated to be around 130 L per inhabitant in the early 1910s. For its own part, France’s Academy of Medicine stated in an extensive study published in 1915 that a “modest” drinker should be defined as one drinking only a litre or less of wine per day. 12. Albert Dauzat, L’argot de la guerre, d’après une enquête auprès des officiers et soldats, Paris: Armand Colin, 1918, pp. 59–31.

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61

13. Alexandre Lafon, La camaraderie au front, 1914–1918, Paris: Armand Colin, 2014, p. 260. 14. Roland Dorgelès, Les croix de bois, Paris: A. Michel, 1919 (New Edition, Paris: Le Livre de poche, 2007), p. 42. 15. Archives départementales de l’Hérault [hereinafter ADH], 172 J 2, Jean Pouzolet, Journal résumé de la guerre 1914–1918, 22–23 August 1915. 16. Paul Duval-Arnould, Crapouillots. Feuillets d’un carnet de guerre, Paris: Plon, 1916, p. 237. 17. Ibid., p. 59. 18. Frédéric Rousseau, La guerre censurée. Une histoire des combattants européens de 14–18, Paris: Seuil, 1999, p. 174. 19. ADH, 18 PRI 2, Maurice Berruyer, Journal de guerre, 28 May 2015. 20.  Service historique de la Défense [hereinafter SHD], 6 N 94, Fonds Clemenceau, Incident report dated 30 October 1915 on disturbances in Cahors (29 October 1915). 21. Pierre Cauboue, “Les coopératives militaires pendant la guerre”, Revue d’Économie Politique, July–August 1917, pp. 297–298. 22. Carnets de guerre d’Alphonse Gallienne, Lebucher collection, 23 August 1914. 23. A typical episode from the summer of 1914 is reported by Captain Jules Jeanbernat in his memoirs. See Lettres de guerre (1914–1918), Paris: Plon, 1920, p. 61. 24. Henri Bury, Journal de guerre, private collection, p. 13. 25. Jules Isaac, Un historien dans la Grande Guerre. Lettres et carnets, 1914– 1917, Paris: Armand-Colin, 2004. Letter dated 5 September 1915. 26. SHD, 19 N 38, Miscellaneous reports, Complaint from Madame Gibert, April 1918. 27. See, for example, SHD, 18 N 190, “Report on the incident involving chasseurs from the 44th battalion, 17 June 1917. Chasseurs complaining about the absence of any wine merchant and causing a racket”. 28. Emmanuelle Cronier, Permissionnaires dans la Grande Guerre, p. 182. 29.  SHD, 6 N 21, Fight against alcoholism, blank note, Calvados, 6 December 1914. 30. Session dated 2 March 1915, reported in a letter from the Ligue nationale contre l’alcoolisme to the Ministry of War, 12 March 1915, SHD, 6 N 21, Fight against alcoholism, blank note. 31. “A nos lecteurs”, L’Alarme, No. 1, April 1916, p. 2. 32.  Bulletin de l’Académie de Médecine, Compendium of sessions and reports for the year 1915. 33. Major Félix Chapuis, Instruction théorique du soldat par lui-même, Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1914, 24th Edition, p. 67.

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34. Henri Barbusse, Le Feu. Journal d’une escouade, Paris: Flammarion, 1916, p. 165. 35. Testimony of Raoul Dumas, cited by Alexandre Lafon, La camaraderie au front, 1914–1918, p. 260. 36. Letters of Jean-Pierre Poutous (34th Infantery Regiment), private collection, letter dated 3 May 1915. 37. Marcel Etévé, Lettres d’un combattant, Paris: Hachette, 1917, p. 164. 38. SHD, 18 N 190, Note from the 3rd Army Military Staff dated 2 August 1916. 39.  Major F. Chapuis, Instruction théorique du soldat par lui-même, pp. 26–27. 40. SHD, 6 N 21, Fight against alcoholism, blank note, Anonymous note [in all likelihood coming from the National Temperance League], 23 September 1914. 41. Ibid. Decree governing the sale of alcohol to troops in the “Zone des armées”, 5th Army, 3 March 1915. 42. SHD, 6 N 21, Fight against alcoholism, blank note, letter and decree dated 23 March 1915. 43. Ibid. Letter from General Vautier to the Minister of War dated 1 July 1915. Cafés, brasseries and outlets of any kind had to be closed by 10 p.m. every night in towns of more than 5000 inhabitants (9 p.m. in all other localities). 44. Ibid. Letter to the Minister of War, 15 July 1915. 45. Ministerial circular dated 27 October 1915. Cf. SHD, 5 N 269, Note to the Minister of War, 7 November 1915. 46. SHD, 16 N 1575, Chronological transcript of the orders, instructions and directives relating to the sale and circulation of alcohol in the armies. 47. The first step in this area had been the prohibition of absinth, implemented in the army as early as the end of 1914 and extended to the whole population in 1915. 48.  SHD, 16 N 1575, GQG (General Headquarters), decision dated 15 February 1916. 49. SHD, 16 N 1575, GQG (General Headquarters), instruction dated 13 April 1916. 50. SHD, 16 N 1575, instructions dated 1 and 30 July 1917. 51.  SHD, 7 N 175, letter from the Minister of War, 12 August 1917. However, this measure was softened regarding shunting yards, that is, allowing soldiers on leave to fill their regulation flasks. 52.  Thierry Fillaut, “La lutte contre l’alcoolisme dans l’armée pendant la Grande Guerre. Principes, méthodes et résultats”, in Laurence Guignard, Hervé Guillemain and Stéphane Tison (eds.), Expériences de la folie. Criminels, soldats, patients en psychiatrie (XIXe–XXe siècles), Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2013, pp. 141–152.

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53.  Imprimerie-librairie de la gendarmerie, Loi du 1er octobre 1917 sur la répression de l’ivresse publique et sur la police des débits de boissons, Paris: A. Le Normand, 1917. 54. SHD, 18 N 190, Model decree, April 1916. 55. SHD, 6 N 21, Fight against alcoholism, blank note, 3 March 1915. 56. Captain Jules Allard, Journal d’un gendarme, 1814–1918, Paris: Bayard, 2010. 57. Louis N. Panel, La Grande Guerre des gendarmes. 58. SHD, 19 N 1195, Gendarmerie report dated 8 August 1918. 59. Ibid. Gendarmerie report dated 18 September 1918. 60.  Recently reasserted by the Ministry of War via a circular dated 18 September 1918. Cf. ADH, 4 M 709, Thefts and Frauds. Circular from the Legal Affairs Division of the Minister’s secretariat sent to all military governors, generals in command of military regions and chief commanding officers of French troops in Northern Africa. 61. Ibid. Report dated 27 September 1918. 62.  “L’alcoolisme français et les soldats américains”, L’Alarme, No. 10, October 1918, pp. 3–4. See Also SHD, 18 N 32, Supplies (food, fodder, tobacco), note from the special Franco-American office, Ministry of War, 22 July 1918. 63. SHD, 19 N 38, Fournier and Gallopin cases, reports dated 16 May 1918 and 27 April 1918. 64. SHD, 11 J 6, Hanen case, Conviction file ref. 19/105, 1916. 65. SHD, 11 J 6, Lombard case, June–July 1917. 66. ADH, 2 R 913–914, Court martial files, August–December 1914. 67. See the testimony of Captain Allard on this matter. 68.  See Emmanuel Taïeb’s survey article on this issue: “Des rumeurs de guerre”, Quaderni, Vol. 49, 2002, pp. 5–16. See also the interpretation of the “Pendus de Verdun” affair by Louis-Napoléon Panel in La Grande guerre des gendarmes, p. 533 sq. 69. SHD, 6 N 94, Fonds Clemenceau, Perpignan incidents file, 10 February 1916. 70. SHD, 11 J 6, War Justice, Court martial files, Coursol case, decision ref. 2/88, 1916. 71. ADH, 2 R 909, Court martial files, Royer case, decision ref. 143/1088, 1914. 72. SHD, 19 N 37, Note dated 4 March 1917. 73.  SHD, 19 N 1195, Note from the Sûreté (criminal investigations and counterintelligence) bureau of the 7th Army, 7 September 1918. 74.  Ibid., Petition from families of soldiers on leave from the village of Hérimoncourt (Doubs département), 25 August 1918.

64  S. le BRAS 75. On this subject, see Albert Dauzat, L’Argot de la guerre. D’après une enquête auprès des officiers et soldats, Paris: A. Colin, 1918. 76.  Concerning the consumption of alcoholic beverages by gendarmes, see Terry W. Strieter, “Drinking on the Job. Ivresse among the French Gendarmerie in the nineteenth century”, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Western Society for French History, No. 13, 1986, pp. 173–181. 77. Henri Barbusse, Le Feu. Journal d’une escouade, p. 125.

CHAPTER 5

Carabinieri Pilots and Italian Military Aviation During the First World War Flavio Carbone

The Arma dei Carabinieri, or Carabinieri, was established on 13 July 1814 in Turin by the royal will of King Victor Emmanuel I of Savoy. Subsequently, they were present during all the military operations in Italian history, beginning with the Battle of Grenoble in 1815.1 After they were established, the Carabinieri of the Kingdom of Sardinia acquired powers of a police force with military status, all the while carrying out general duties among the civilian population, almost like the Gendarmerie nationale in France.2 From 1822 onwards, these soldiers of the law also took on the duties of a military police force after the liberal riots in Piedmont-Sardinia.3 It can thus be said that, from the beginning of their 200-year history, the Carabinieri fulfilled multiple functions: as law enforcement forces in the public space, as military police and as combat forces. All these missions were accomplished during the Great War.4 A march battalion made up of Royal carabinieri, a group of squadrons of carabinieri on horseback, 168 platoons and 257 provost platoons made up the war effort of the Arma during the Great War, alongside

F. Carbone (*)  Comando Generale dell’Arma dei Carabinieri - Ufficio Storico, Rome, Italy © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_5

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carabinieri aviators and the Arditi.5 One can thus estimate that approximately 500 officers and 20,000 non-commissioned officers (NCOs) and carabinieri participated in the conflict. If the battalion and the group of squadrons made up the combat units, the other units (sections, platoons, detachments) fulfilled functions of military police. The first engagement took place on 19 July 1915, when the mobilised regiment, created in May from the students of the training corps, sought to take Mount Podgora. At the end of an intense day of combat, the result was that 53 had been killed, 143 injured and 10 were missing, across all military ranks of the regiment. On 10 October 1917, Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy, Duke of Aosta and commander of the Italian Third Army, reminded everyone during a medal ceremony honouring the Carabinieri for military valour, that “on Podgora, during those unforgettable days in July 1915, organised into regiments, you demonstrated the greatest persistence, remaining steadfast and cool under the furious enemy storm of iron and fire, decimated, but not weakened”.6 Besides the combat experience endured by this regiment, one must remember that the Carabinieri also participated in the war as members of units known as the Arditi, while other men served in air units.7 The decision to present the action of the Italian Carabinieri in the third dimension makes it possible to highlight a function that was hardly, if at all, taken into account by law enforcement forces during this period in the other European countries.8 If it is the case that 20,000 carabinieri were deployed during the war, carabinieri aviators, numbering nearly 180, must undoubtedly be considered separately, on account of their use in very different circumstances to terrestrial forces. Finally, another point of interest in studying the history of these soldiers stems from the mobilisation of their memory, which developed in respect to these men both during and after the war.

The Carabinieri at the Heart of a New Weapon: Aviation It is first necessary to quickly revisit the organisation of the Italian Air Force before and after the war. The first wartime flight took place during the Italo-Turkish War (1911–1912), with the use of small, rather unsafe Nieuport monoplanes, and hand-thrown grenades. Artillery captain Riccardo Moizo, who was Commander General (Comandante generale) of the Arma between 1935 and 1940, was the first aviator to be taken as a prisoner of war.

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These new machines were first experimented with at the beginning of military operations on the Western Front and during the period of Italian neutrality; this experimentation intensified with industrial mobilisation in Italy. In spite of the Italo-Turkish War experience, and the experience gained in 1914, on 24 May 1915, the Kingdom of Italy was only able to line up 5 dirigibles, several aerostats, and a dozen aeroplane squadrons, that is to say 58 aircraft in total.9 At the same time, the navy possessed only a few hydroplanes. Recruiting volunteers for aerial operations began. Recruitment was open to all soldiers, and when, in 1916, aviation was opened up to members of the Carabinieri, many of them expressed an interest. There are no specific statistics concerning the origin of these pilots, but it is possible to estimate that between 173 and 184 of them were originally soldiers of the Arma.10 Many of them distinguished themselves by demonstrating remarkable technical ability and military qualities, as well as valour in combat, thus diversifying the prestige of their institution via their careers as aviators. During the conflict, these carabinieri pilots received 20 awards, including a Gold Medal, 11 Silver Medals, 7 Bronze Medals, a War Cross as well as innumerable gratuities of lesser importance. Of these pioneer carabinieri in Italian aviation, the most famous of all must be remembered: Lieutenant Ernesto Cabruna. Enlisted as a student in the Carabinieri in 1908, he participated in the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–1912, within a section sent to the Greek islands that became the Italian Dodecanese at the end of the First World War.11 Obtaining his pilot’s licence in 1916, he single-handedly attacked, on 26 March 1918, 11 Austrian aeroplanes. He shot one down before forcing the others to flee. Thanks to this action, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant and he received both the Silver Medal of Military Valour and media recognition—his combat mission found itself on the cover of La Domenica del Corriere (a newspaper), with the title “One against Eleven”. Subsequently, he multiplied his aerial victories. During the Second Battle of Piave River,12 on 15 June 1918, he shot down an enemy aeroplane near Tezze; on 20 June, another was shot down at Muzzetta; and on 21 June, he shot down a Draken not far from Ceggia.13 One of Cabruna’s aeroplanes is currently preserved within the Carabinieri Officer Candidate School, where it reminds students of the heroism of pilots, serving as an example to young recruits.14 Cabruna’s distinguished career is remembered by both the Italian Air Force and Arma dei Carabinieri.15

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The Profiles and Careers of Men Motivated by a Type of Enlistment Hitherto Unknown The question of the motivation for members of the Carabinieri to enlist in aviation is problematic, as the study of these men’s professional profiles underlines. Some had the possibility of remaining at their posts within a brigade, since they had not yet been mobilised; others had already been mobilised in sections or provost platoons; four carabinieri, posted to the Royal Guards opted, nonetheless, for the aerial experience. Several hypotheses can be put forward to explain their motivation. The first reason was probably that these men belonged to elite units. This also happened to be the case for aviators, since the selection process was rigorous: medical examinations and a heavy training period, only then to go on to risk one’s life in an aeroplane made out of wood and canvas. It is important to highlight, in this context, the fact that research into technical solutions for building high-performance aeroplanes sometimes resulted in the deaths of pilots.16 Moreover, some of them had a passion for flying, for aeroplanes and for aerial construction techniques, like the young Ernesto Cabruna, who, notably, wanted to register a patent for a new model of propeller. One must remember that the Air Force was associated with the cavalry, like the Carabinieri, and perceived as an elite unit: one might suppose that the decision for a carabiniere to become a pilot was driven by the wish to be part of an even more elite group. The search for glory also constituted a psychological motivation that is worth investigating. Before the World War, Italy experienced intense action on the part of the interventisti (the “interventionists”). They kindled the warmongering tendencies of the population and worked towards their country entering the war. Moreover, in some futurist poems, piloting flying machines is exalted. Perhaps reading these lines had an effect on soldiers who had already participated in terrestrial military operations.17 One can suppose that soldiers and carabinieri might have been united by the mystique of flying and by the words of the “interventionists” on the necessity of actively participating in the war effort. A final reason for choosing aviation was connected to economics. Aircraft pilots received pay that was superior to that of soldiers in the trenches. This engagement thus offered the possibility to improve one’s own conditions by entering a new, more specialised profession, which got the carabinieri out of the trenches and the small brigades, in order to experience a completely different life: the life of a pilot.

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Material improvement, owing to increased pay, and the symbolic improvement aviation had to offer, via a more rapid progression through to higher military ranks, undoubtedly explains why the majority of aviators were simple carabinieri or NCOs. Many carabinieri, thanks to their enlistment in aviation, were able to become NCOs more rapidly, like Vicebrigadiere Giuseppe Marini or Brigadiere Giuseppe Puzu. Some were even promoted to the rank of officer cadet, before being given the epaulettes of a pilot officer, or second lieutenant, and then lieutenant; that is to say, entering upon an officer’s career, in the manner of Ernesto Cabruna and Demetrio Artuso, or Annibale Comazzi and Luigi Monnier. The careers of these officers and NCOs remains to be studied in a systematic way. The officers, on the other hand, seem not to have been interested in this new form of combat. After the war, former Carabiniere Demetrio Artuso reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the Air Force and died on 23 May 1940 in Addis Abeba.18 The Carabiniere Giulio Baldi left the Arma after the war, and went on to have an interesting career in civil aviation.19 The role played by the Arma in the development of aviation was greatly mobilised by the institutional memory of the conflict. This made it possible to hide, in part, the delicate matter of the actions of the Carabinieri in providing military police for the troops.20 At the same time, the contribution made by the Carabinieri to the rapid development of military aviation was to be emphasised. First, they appeared to have a greater sense of discipline, compared to volunteers in other armed services. Next, they offered both military knowledge and military culture, acquired as a result of their dual experience as general policemen with military status and as military policemen. The skills of the Carabinieri were also technical, as the majority of them possessed professional knowledge acquired while in employment before the war, with jobs as mechanics, chauffeurs, or other occupations linked to the then new automobile revolution. Others, on the other hand, worked as masons, bakers or in some cases had barely finished school.21 It must be pointed out that some carabinieri became aircraft pilots after having studied in France. This was the case for Antonio Baggiani, who obtained a licence to fly a Nieuport aeroplane after having been admitted to the aviation school in Pau.22 However, whilst the career prospects of aviators were wonderful, the actual activity of being a pilot remained challenging and very risky. With this in mind, one must remember Brigadier Egisto Gabelli. He followed

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a career in aviation shortly before the terrible days at Caporetto. He was driven by a spirit of action and adventure. After having completing numerous bombing and reconnaissance missions he crashed for no apparent reason while flying above the trenches carrying out a liaison mission with the infantry.23 Another example of the danger attributed to aviation was an instance that occurred after the armistice with Austria on 26 August 1919. A Caproni CA.3 aeroplane, which was being used in a training flight at the Aspern aerodrome near Vienna, crashed soon after take-off—a crash thought to be caused by violent winds affecting the aeroplane’s lift. The pilot, Lieutenant Monnier, died in the accident. He had found his way into aviation through the corps of NCOs from the Carabinieri, and had been promoted to the rank of officer as a reward for his bravery during combat. These dramatic episodes illustrate the omnipresence of death in the life of those flying carabinieri.

Conclusions What conclusions can be drawn from this overview of carabinieri aviators? Becoming an aviator is without doubt a unique and special experience, elevating both its protagonists and the institutions to which they belonged. This period in aviation even today represents a prestigious memory for the Arma dei Carabinieri, in contrast to the more painful and less glorious history associated with their tasks as provost police, that is to say, military police. The aerial activity of the Carabinieri from 1916 onwards forms part of a representation of the Arma as a combat force. Prior to aviation Carabinieri regimental activity was limited to terrestrial roles, like the charges carried out by units on horseback during the conquest of Gorizia in 1916. Finally, the culture of the Carabinieri, which was in part cavalry, seemed to penetrate aviation by introducing a chivalrous element to this very specialist skill of military flying. After the war, the majority of carabinieri went back to their usual service within brigades, carrying out their duties once again in the area of territorial control. However, many of these former aviators progressed rapidly through the ranks. A small number of men remained in aviation, only to disappear with the emergence of the new fascist regime. On 28 March 1923, the Regia Aeronautica, a new autonomous air force, was created. Thus, began a new era in history, one in which the Carabinieri played, from that point on, only a secondary role as military police, that is to say on land, as opposed to in the sky.

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Notes











1. During Napoleon’s Hundred Days, an Austro-Piedmont army from Savoy penetrated the Dauphiné to besiege Grenoble, and the Carabinieri had the possibility of distinguishing themselves during the operations. Carabinieri 1814–1980, Rome: Ente Editoriale per l’Arma dei Carabinieri, 1980, pp. 21–22. 2. To understand the legacy left to posterity by the French model, and to retrace the way in which it spread, see Arnaud-Dominique Houte and Jean-Noël Luc (eds.), Les Gendarmeries dans le monde, de la Révolution française à nos jours, Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2016. 3. Giuliano Ferrari, La Polizia Militare profili storici, giuridici e d’impiego, supplement to the Rassegna dell’Arma dei Carabinieri, No. 2, 1993. 4. For a general idea of the role played by the Carabinieri during the Great War, see Flavio Carbone, “Les carabiniers italiens dans la Grande Guerre: arme combattante et force de l’ordre”, Revue de la gendarmerie nationale and “Les gendarmes dans la Grande Guerre”, Louis N. Panel (ed.), No. 252, 2015, pp. 42–51; Filippo Cappellano and Flavio Carbone, “I Carabinieri Reali al fronte nella Grande Guerra”, in Nicola Labanca and Giorgio Rochat (eds.), Il soldato, la guerra e il rischio di morire, Milan: Unicopli, 2006, pp. 167–214. 5. Italian army corps created in 1914. Its soldiers were scouts trained in combat techniques, what we would now call “commandos” or “special forces”. Concerning the point about Basilio Di Martino and Filippo Cappellano, see I reparti d’assalto italiani nella Grande Guerra (1915– 1918), Rome: Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito – Ufficio Storico, 2007. 6. Carabinieri 1814–1980, p. 353. 7. Id. 8. On this subject, for France, see “La Gendarmerie et la conquête de l’air”, a special issue of the journal Histoire et patrimoine des gendarmes, No. 8, December 2013; lieutenant-colonel (ER) Roger Drouin, L’aventure au quotidien: l’histoire (impertinente?…) des Forces Aériennes de la Gendarmerie, tome 1: la Préhistoire, Saint-Denis: Publibook, 2014, p. 47. 9. On the role played by aerial observers during the war, see Basilio Di Martino, L’avventura del Draken – Gli aerostieri italiani nella Grande Guerra, Roma: Aeronautica Militare – Ufficio Storico, 2003; on the use of dirigibles, see I Dirigibili Italiani nella Grande Guerra, Roma: Aeronautica Militare – Ufficio Storico, 2005; by the same author, on the support given by aviation to infantry and artillery, see Ali sulle trincee – Ricognizione tattica ed osservazione aerea nell’aviazione italiana durante la Grande Guerra, Roma: Aeronautica Militare – Ufficio Storico, 1999. Finally, for an evaluation of the actions of aerial units during the First

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World War, see Roberto Gentilli and Paolo Varriale, I reparti dell’aviazione italiana nella Grande Guerra, Roma: Aeronautica Militare – Ufficio Storico, 1999. In this last book, there is evidence of numerous carabinieri in service in military aviation. 10. Archivio Storico dell’Ufficio Storico del Comando Generale dell’Arma dei Carabinier [hereinafter ASACC], Documentoteca (D), dossier 866.1 (Carabinieri pionieri dell’aviazione). 11. Tomaso Cartosio, Vita eroica di Ernesto Cabruna, Roma: Ufficio Storico Aeronautica Militare, 1972. 12. During this battle (15 and 23 June 1918), the Austrians were confident they could easily reach the Italian resistance at the front, but on the contrary, they felt such a heavy defeat that Field Marshal Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf was relieved of his command. Mario Isnenghi and Giorgio Rochat, La Grande Guerra 1914–1918, Scandicci: La Nuova Italia, 2000, p. 458. 13. Carabinieri 1814–1980, pp. 369–378 is dedicated to Cabruna. In the Carabinieri Museum, there is a corridor specifically dedicated to the pioneers of aviation, and particularly to this “ace”. 14.  http://www.carabinieri.it/editoria/il-carabiniere/anno-2013/gennaio/ cronache/ernesto-cabruna (23 June 2016). 15. The website of the Italian Air Force has a page entitled I grandi aviatori, where the main Italian aviators are mentioned by name, particularly Cabruna. See http://www.aeronautica.difesa.it/cpa/gallery/Pagine/ Igrandiaviatori.aspx (23 June 2016). 16.  Gregory Alegi, “Costruire piloti: scuole, allievi, istruttori e aerie”, in Giancarlo Montinaro and Marina Salvetti (eds.), L’Aeronautica italiana nella I Guerra Mondiale, Roma: Stato Maggiore Aeronautica – Ufficio Storico, 2010, pp. 129–177. 17. Mario Isnenghi and Giorgio Rochat, La Grande Guerra 1914–1918, see particularly Chapter 2. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, founder of the futurist movement, himself participated in the fighting, for example, during the war between Bulgaria and Turkey in 1912. In 1914, he was an activist in interventionist circles. 18.  Archivio Storico dello Stato Maggiore dell’Aeronautica [hereinafter AUSSMA], Fondo aviatori Prima Guerra Mondiale, file Demetrio Artuso. 19. The Carabinieri Giulio Baldi finished his career as a squadron leader in the Air Force, after having piloted numerous civil aeroplanes. AUSSMA, Fondo aviatori Prima Guerra Mondiale, file Giulio Baldi. 20. Carabinieri Umberto Martini, I Carabinieri piloti decorati al valore nella Guerra Mondiale, Fabriano: Tipografia Economica, 1938. 21. See the files on the carabinieri, AUSSMA, Fondo aviatori Prima Guerra Mondiale, ad nomen.

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22. AUSSMA, Fondo aviatori Prima Guerra Mondiale, file Antonio Baggiani. 23. The brigadier’s name was Egisto Gambelli, but in an article he is referred to as Egidio Luigi Farulla, “Ali infrante ricordi di guerra”, L’Arma Fedele, Vol. 1, No. 5, March 1924, p. 18. The name of the non-commissioned officer is inscribed on a memorial to the fallen in the province of Grosseto, http://www.14-18.it/lapide/SBSAE_SI_S61/63/01 (1 February 2016).

CHAPTER 6

A War-time Secret Police: Activities of the Geheime Feldpolizei on the Western Front During the First World War Gérald Sawicki

Created on 12 June 1866, at the time of the Austro-Prussian War, the Geheime Feldpolizei (GFP) or “Secret Field Police” of the Prussian Army’s Große Hauptquartier (Great Headquarters or GHQ) was immediately given—in spite of its then rather limited personnel—very wide-ranging assignments in times of war, including the protection of the most important civilian and military figures of the Kingdom of Prussia and its allies, espionage missions abroad but also general intelligence gathering in cooperation with the Nachrichtenburö, the intelligence branch of the Großer Generalstab (Great General Staff).1 The GFP subsequently operated in accordance with the same principles during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–1871. Its results were so adequate that its involvement was planned in the event of any new conflict with France or—as became likely at a later date—Russia. From 1890 onwards, the

G. Sawicki (*)  University of Lorraine, Nancy, France © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_6

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only difference was that its members began to be selected with a greater importance being placed on linguistic skills.2 How did the organisation of this German police structure evolve on the Western Front during WWI? This chapter will examine its assignments, the means it used and the limits it reached.

Organisation and Structures of the GFP Preparation and Improvisation on the Eve of War Until 1913, the GFP was only intended to act as a service of the Great Headquarters or auxiliary service to the Great General Staff. The three-quarters of its personnel were Prussians and only a quarter originated from Alsace-Lorraine. The need to make it available to other German army corps was felt3 and numbers doubled to reach 92 policemen.4 Given the decisive importance of the future Western Front, recruits from Alsace-Lorraine were enrolled at the same increased rate. Generally able to speak French, such agents also had good experience of the French intelligence service and its methods.5 GFP members, together with border force superintendents, cooperated with the Zentralpolizeistelle (central police bureau) in Strasburg, a powerful intelligence tool created in 1887, and with the intelligence officers (Nachrichtenoffiziere) of various army corps.6 The German intelligence system had a major flaw. Contrary to France, the German Empire did not have a centralised counter-intelligence force for the whole Reich. Just as in France, progressive specialisation and professionalisation of personnel gradually took place but the rationalisation and modernisation effort was thwarted by the opposition of the Confederate States who refused to give up their prerogatives to the benefit of Prussia.7 When war broke out, the immense responsibilities faced by counter-intelligence were de facto transferred to the Great General Staff who had to improvise.8 Headed by Major Nicolai, military intelligence, that is, Section IIIb, then soon afterwards Department IIIb, developed its own sub-department III under the name Spionage-Abwehr (“defence against espionage”, i.e. counter-intelligence). This new unit was intended to coordinate counter-intelligence on all fronts and occupied countries. In all districts under military authority, local army Nachrichtenoffiziere were its armed wing, together with the GFP.9

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The GFP’s Activities with GHQ and Various Army Corps On the Western Front, counter-intelligence was mostly entrusted to regular Alsace-Lorraine police forces which rendered “excellent services”10 throughout the war. At the time of mobilisation, Maximilian Bauer took over as Director (Feldpolizeidirektor) of the GFP at the GHQ level and thus became responsible for all secret police operations in the western theatre of the Great War.11 Born in Munich and a reserve major in the Bavarian Army, Bauer had pursued his whole career in Alsace-Lorraine, first in Metz then in Novéant-sur-Moselle as a border force superintendent. Having been promoted to deputy head, then head of the Zentralpolizeistelle in Strasburg from 1905 to 1914, he already enjoyed a reputation as one of the best German specialists of intelligence and French espionage.12 He had even met Kaiser Wilhelm II personally during a visit to Strasburg and this acquaintance was prolonged during the war; when reporting to GHQ, Bauer often had lunch with the Kaiser who took advantage of the opportunity to ask him “verbally about everything he was keen to know about Allied espionage”.13 Bauer thus followed GHQ services in their western advance. On 6 August 1914, he set up his own quarters in Luxemburg; after the battle of the Marne, he moved them to Charleville where he commandeered the Hollweg restaurant, then a building on Avenue Mézières where they remained even after GHQ was transferred to Kreuznach in February 1917. In fact, the GFP did not leave Charleville until March 1918 when High Command was moved to Spa where he stayed until the Armistice.14 In Charleville, Bauer led a team of 5 commissioners and 30 inspectors. His deputy was Police Superintendent Wolter. Originating from Brandenburg, this police officer from Berlin had been a liaison officer between intelligence services and the Prussian Ministry of the Interior before the war. Sent to the front in 1916, he had later returned to Charleville to act as head of postal censorship services. Other officers in the team already had sufficient knowledge of France where they had sojourned before 1914—probably for undercover espionage missions. Funk, for instance, was not only “one of the best sleuths in the German police” but had also been for 2 years the aide-de-camp of Maximilian von Schwarzkoppen, the German military attaché in Paris. Another, Longfils, had lived in France for a year as a café pianist; two others, Schalf and Heimkehr, had been respectively a waiter in Charleville, Lille and Paris and a factory worker in a small town near Clermont-Ferrand.15

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The seven German armies on the Western Front also had their own GFP teams with, on average, 1 commissioner and 8–10 inspectors.16 Alsace-Lorraine personnel also featured prominently there. Mulhouse Police Commissioner Groppengiesser, for instance, was a former border force superintendent in Amanvillers who became head of the GFP’s naval branch in Brugge (GFP Marinekorps); Dirr, also a former border force superintendent in Montreux-Vieux, became head of the 4th Army’s GFP team17; Lorraine-born Steinmetz, again a former border force superintendent in Novéant-sur-Moselle, was first appointed (15 August 1914) head of the 2nd Army’s GFP team, then rapidly transferred to lead the 6th Army’s team (12 September),18 where he supervised the work of two other men from Alsace-Lorraine, Jules Haupert and Auguste Müller, police officers from the so-called “political brigade” in Metz. Led by Otto Obst, this service had specialised before 1914 in intelligence and counter-intelligence activities. Müller had even become the “confidential man” of German military intelligence in Metz where he was entrusted with the recruitment and management of informants and other “correspondents”.19 Obst himself, yet again a former border force officer in Deutsch-Avricourt, had been appointed as GFP head for General Ludwig von Falkenhausen’s army stationed in Strasburg.20 A Gradually Increased Capacity After the front line stabilised in the autumn of 1914 and GFP teams had settled in the occupied districts of France and Belgium, the counterintelligence structure was gradually reinforced. On 9 and 10 December 1914 in Strasburg, then later in Berlin on 11 December, the main commanders of German intelligence (including Major Nicolai and Police Director Bauer) met with a number of representatives from both civilian and military authorities for a series of conferences focused on the organisation of counter-intelligence. It was then decided to increase the number of GFP and Zentralpolizeistelle in Brussels. The German Army’s High Command promised to provide supplementary Gendarmerie and police officers with a proper knowledge of French. Likewise, the closure of borders with the Netherlands and Switzerland was to be tightened, together with an improved surveillance of postal traffic and railway infrastructures.21 In February 1915, two specialised SpionageAbwehr branches were set up near the aforementioned borders, in Wesel (Abwehrstelle-Nord) and Freiburg-im-Breisgau (Abwehrstelle-Sud). As the

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station acting to centralise information, Wesel played a considerable part: from 7 February to 22 February 1917, it dispatched to its substations at least 100 circulars related to the surveillance of suspects while the Prussian Ministry of War itself only dispatched a maximum of 50 over the same period.22 In the same year of 1915, police structures became more complex. New GFP teams were added in accordance with the creation of Army Groups23 and mutual encroachments began to appear. By late June 1917, when General Fritz von Below’s army was transferred from northern France back to Charleville, its own GFP team found itself operating side by side with Bauer’s.24 Likewise, the competence of GFP teams was limited to areas under direct army authority (operational theatres and staging posts); the northern part of Luxemburg thus escaped their remit to the benefit of the local Zentralpolizeistelle and two thirds of Belgian territory depended on the Brussels Zentralpolizeistelle.25 Alsace-Lorraine was divided into three GFP teams, respectively reporting to Army Groups A, B and C. They were not merged into one until 19 April 1917 when the “Duke Albrecht of Wurttemberg” Army Group was created.26 Such administrative changes went together with a notable increase in numbers, which quadrupled in 4 years, from 92 to 365 officers. In October 1918, the 1st Army’s GFP team numbered 1 commissioner and 20 inspectors; the 4th Army’s GFP team 4 commissaires and 73 inspectors and the 6th Army’s GFP team 5 commissioners and 59 agents27— while the Strasburg Feldpolizeistelle only numbered 11 officers in 1917–1918, that is, the same number an average GFP team relied on at the beginning of the war.28 This surge in numbers did create problems in terms of training and foreign language skills but it seems German services gradually resolved these issues.29

The GFP’s Methods and Assignments Far-Reaching Missions A public information poster placarded in Alsace-Lorraine in early 1918 defined in which cases the GFP ought to be alerted forthwith: Cases of treason and espionage; attacks on military establishments or any establishment related to the war-effort; attacks against railway lines or railway installations; acts of wilful damage or sabotage against factories, machinery, depots, warehouses or stockpiles; postal contraband;

80  G. SAWICKI unauthorised transmission of information; unauthorised taking of photographs; illegal border-crossing attempts; detention of weapons or ammunitions; detention of requisitioned metals or any other requisitioned item; evasion of conscription; travel without permit (Ausweis); printing or possession of seditious writings; introduction of banned newspapers or magazines; assistance to any anti-German activity; participation in any anti-German demonstration; encouragement or invitation to strike or refuse work.30

GFP missions thus covered counter-intelligence but also “political” police work and the repression of sabotage, including attacks against economic assets, which, as the war went on, became more and more important. Furthermore, GFP teams played an increasing role in fighting internal demoralisation under the influence of enemy propaganda as well as under the influence of pacifists or revolutionary socialists. The basic methods used were police checks and searches; surveillance of the press; postal censorship and passport controls. Borders were tightly closed, for instance with the installation of an electrified fence between Belgium and the Netherlands.31 Regarding the press, Director Bauer proceeded with a number of arrests, suppressed news stories, kept a close watch on foreign correspondents and even came up with the idea of creating an offensive propaganda tool—the Gazette des Ardennes—targeting the occupied population. Though its initiator, he did not manage it directly but only encouraged its sales.32 The GFP also went on the hunt for spies landing from planes, 9 of which (including 4 in uniform) were arrested in 1915, with 5 planes seized.33 Balloons with wicker baskets containing carrier pigeons were another prime target: 63 such baskets were discovered in December 1917, 41 in January 1918 and 45 in May 1918.34

Dismantling Allied Networks The most important assignment given to the GFP was the dismantling of Allied resistance and intelligence networks. In this field, the action of the GFP reflected the general history of the occupation of northern France and Belgium, including phenomena of compromise and “collaboration with the enemy”. Without denunciations from various non-German agents and other traitors, German services would never have been able to carry out effective work. Depending on the importance of the case, denunciation of an espionage network might earn its author between

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250 and 800 marks; denunciation of a French soldier was paid a fixed price of 60 marks; 50 marks for the discovery of an arms depot and 20 marks for anyone in possession of a banned newspaper. Moreover, agents were entitled to the free taking of foodstuffs from contraband stocks seized during raids.35 In order to infiltrate Allied networks, the GFP made use of so-called “confidential men” (Vertrauensmänner). Some were agents already enlisted before 1914 and simply continuing previous work; such was the case of the most famous among them—Paoli Schwartz, aka Agent 39. The son of a French police commissaire tried and jailed for espionage in 1895, he had already recruited and managed spies for Director Bauer, the then head of political police for Alsace-Lorraine. Having taken part in counter-intelligence missions, he followed Bauer to the Great General Staff, first as an interpreter and photographer, then as a GFP inspector (Feldpolizei Inspektor). In 1915, he was posted at the German military governorate in Lille, working under Captain Himmel, a local head of intelligence, and lawyer Horn, provisional police superintendent/ captain. In 1916, he was transferred to the GFP team of the 6th Army, whose staff ultimately fell back to Aachen on 20 October 1918. Described as “a very dangerous and active German spy” by inter-Allied intelligence services in Folkestone, he was for 3 years in charge of repression against resistance activities in and around Lille, operating under the false name of Paul Berger. He manipulated a number of French people into betraying their countrymen for money. In one case a guide led resistance men right into barbed wire lines at the Dutch border; in another, prostitutes went looking for soldiers or draft evaders in hiding. Paoli Schwartz was also involved in the arrest of Aurèle Guénard, a customs officer having remained after the 1914 invasion and who “alone against the Germans” fought a small-scale guerrilla war, killing 17 enemy soldiers, taking mail into the Netherlands and facilitating the evasion of French prisoners of war in Lille. Convicted for spying, Guénard was executed by firing squad at the citadel in Lille on 23 August 1918.36 Emile Krebs was another of Bauer’s permanent agents. A former German policeman in Strasburg, he had played a decisive role in late 1910 when he contributed to the arrest of Captain Lux, head of French intelligence in Belfort. Having close ties with the Zentralpolizeistelle in Brussels, he was initially in charge of the Brabant region in Belgium and of Breda, Eindhoven and Rosendael in the Netherlands. Unmasked

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towards the end of 1916, he was sent to Bucharest but returned in 1918 when he was appointed to watch over army supplies in Brussels. Some of his agents were in fact “converted” and went over to work for Allied services in Holland.37 Finally, Bauer used a number of women, the most famous of whom was Marie-Louise Garnier. Originating from Mulhouse and a convicted confidence trickster before 1914, she already had previous espionage experience in France. Enlisted as a new agent at the beginning of the war and posted at the southern intelligence gathering unit of Section IIIb in Lörrach, she was also used as a “stool pigeon”38 in various jails to inform on prisoners detained for intelligence ties with France. She was later posted at the GFP in Charleville where she searched women on repatriation trains.39

The GFP’s Achievements and Their Limitations Distinguished Success German counter-intelligence scored a number of distinguished successes during the war. The GFP’s first success was the dismantling of the Secteurs de renseignements territoriaux (SRT). These “Territorial Intelligence Sectors” were an impressive clandestine network of agents posted along the borders in the event of a German invasion so as to provide an uninterrupted supply of intelligence to French armies having retreated.40 Already known to German intelligence via the betrayal, on the eve of WWI, of Special Police Inspector Grévillot in Verdun,41 the existence of SRTs was confirmed by the exploitation of secret archives captured from special border force police stations like Conflans-Jarny or Longwy.42 Lists of agents were seized, including citizens of Belgium and Luxemburg already using carrier pigeons to perform espionage before the war. Once arrested, these agents were “deported to central Germany even before their activities could begin to help”.43 Thus neutralised, the organisation was liquidated in the spring of 1915 when the intelligence and evasion network led from Monthermé (in the Ardennes département) by Paulin Jacquemin, the last active SRT group leader, was finally broken up. The whole area covering the rear of the German armies on French territory was therefore left more or less clear of any spies.44 Bauer’s exploitation of French archives also led to numerous arrests in Alsace-Lorraine, such as the January 1915 incarceration of the mayors of Coutures and Pettoncourt in annexed Lorraine.45

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The GFP’s second major success was the remarkable fact that, up until July 1918, German High Command had never appeared to be taken by surprise by Allied offensives—simply because it was kept rather well informed of their main military moves.46 Likewise, counter-intelligence played a part in masking German intent by secretly controlling Allied networks in Liège and Lille. It also used clandestine letterboxes in unoccupied France to gather essential and reliable information. All in all, this system secured an accurate appraisal of the mood among the population, sophisticated surveillance of suspects and the ability to feed the enemy with incorrect or incomplete information.47 Evident Failures The GFP, however, experienced an overall failure in its struggle against Allied networks in the occupied territories. Despite the severe blows it was able to deal at times,48 it was never able to stop the harvesting of intelligence to the benefit of the Entente Powers. Out of the 6000 to 7000 agents operating for Allied services, barely 1000 were arrested. Similarly, out of the 250–300 existing networks, less than 100 were ever dismantled. Finally, while such networks numbered between 20 and 30 agents on average, German intelligence tended to underestimate the size of ongoing resistance activities and exceptionally large networks like La Dame Blanche (The White Lady), that relied on 1000 agents in 1917– 1918, and that were in fact little disturbed by German repression.49 This relative failure of the GFP was confirmed in Alsace-Lorraine. The excesses of its “political” police work even helped to turn the population in favour of France. Regarding espionage, except at the beginning of the war when nearly all French intelligence agents from the Belfort station were arrested, all new agents recruited after 1915 remained active locally until the end of the conflict without being caught. They were even able to give advanced warning of the 15 July 1918 German offensive. As the head of German intelligence Major (later Colonel) Nicolai commented: The German attack on Rheims came up against a forewarned and well-prepared enemy; resulting negative consequences demonstrate the importance of preserving the secrecy of high-command intentions and the sheer usefulness of an intelligence service. How exactly the enemy had been informed – we still do not know.50

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“French Agents” and a Lack of Zeal Within the GFP The GFP also showed several internal flaws. Agents originating from Alsace-Lorraine passed on information to the French throughout the war. One of them was police sergeant Charles Muthmann from annexed Lorraine. Posted at the Directorate of police services in Strasburg, where he was in charge of controlling foreigners, he had become, as early as 1905, Agent Z of the Avricourt border force—commissaire spécial (special superintendent) Louis-Othon Fischer. Fischer was thus regularly informed of the activities of German espionage and fed with valuable military intelligence.51 In 1909, Muthmann had been enlisted to join the GFP in the event of war and thus worked under Bauer’s orders52 until 1915 when he was transferred back to Strasburg police services. Yet the key asset of French intelligence was none other than one of Bauer’s deputies at the Great General Staff, Feldpolizeikommissar (GFP superintendent) Henri Waegelé. An Alsatian born in Kaysersberg in 1888, Waegelé was probably recruited before the war. Sent on missions to France disguised as a maître d’hôtel, he probably passed on to German intelligence top-notch information that was in fact concocted by the French Deuxième Bureau (the Second Bureau of the French General Staff, in charge of intelligence).53 Acting as a police cadet working for the Strasburg Police President and the Mulhouse and Metz Police Directors from 1 February 1912 to 15 September 1914, he was appointed commissaire (police superintendent) in Metz before joining the GFP in Charleville on 1 April 1915.54 There, “perfectly above suspicion on account of his very position”, he established permanent contacts with French intelligence55 and his action proved to be most “influential”.56 “With remarkable audacity”, he not only kept the French well informed of German decisions but also helped, throughout the occupied districts, “numerous patriots to serve France and evade the punishments of German army court martials”.57 He thus protected the Luxemburg-based railway surveillance network led by Lise Rischard. Bauer had in fact entrusted Waegelé with the management of the Landwirt, an agricultural daily newspaper published in Diekirch with subscribers in Switzerland. This afforded an opportunity, three times a week, to publish coded messages: “reading articles on the best way to grow turnips and plant carrots”, French agents, and therefore Allied HQ, were provided with precise information regarding German troop transfers along the Treves-Luxemburg and Thionville-Charleville railway lines.58 In the period of static warfare, Luxemburg railways had become a

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central hub for German military transport. An expert from British intelligence was landed by balloon near Mersch and lived undetected with the Rischard family for the rest of the war.59 Waegelé also reported on what was published in the Gazette des Ardennes60 and circulated French newspapers among friends in Charleville: “Going round the town in this clever fashion, French news thus reached a wide audience while the Germans remained completely unaware”.61 Yet it seems Waegelé’s greatest service was to allow French intelligence to keep a permanent watch on Kaiser Wilhelm II himself with daily reports keeping them “informed of his every move”.62 Other GFP agents originating from Alsace-Lorraine evidenced a definite lack of zeal in the fulfilment of their duties. Posted in late December 1914 in Charleville, commissaire Steinmetz was even discharged from the German Army for this very motive. Back in Metz, his influential friends managed to get him reintegrated into the police force by mid-January 1915. In charge of travel permits at the local Police Directorate, he nevertheless remained under suspicion of being a Francophile. In a similar fashion, Joseph Haupert, who had joined the GFP team of Army Group C in Conflans-Jarny (Meurthe-et-Moselle département) on 1 July 1916, was dismissed in March 1918 and transferred to a position in the vice squad in Metz. A Francophile too, he did not report the landing of a French plane in Gravelotte and allowed it to escape. Captain Kaufmann, head of intelligence for the Army Group, tried to have him courtmartialled for treason but the case was dropped for lack of evidence. Finally, Alsatian Auguste Müller, from the 6th Army’s GFP team was reported, although being deemed “active and intelligent”, as having “failed to perform what was expected of him during the war”.63

Conclusions The assignments of the GFP and its efforts to dismantle Allied resistance and intelligence networks in the occupied areas of northern France and Belgium through the systematic use of undercover agents and other “confidential men”, largely foreshadows what would happen some 20 years later during the Second World War. As confirmed by the recent upward revision of the GFP’s importance and responsibilities in the Nazi repressive apparatus,64 a proper understanding of this wartime police structure must rely on the long-term perspective of its development from 1866 to 1945 and the appraisal of the legacies of successive conflicts. Finally,

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further strictures on the notion of WWI activities as fundamentally innovative must be added by underlining the past roots of German counterintelligence methods in the abovementioned occupied areas; for a large part, methods including surveillance and repression of whole segments of the population had already been invented and applied in the annexed territories of Alsace-Lorraine from 1871 to 1914. From this point of view, the continuity of GFP Director Bauer’s action before and during the war, in Strasburg then in Charleville, provides a very revealing example.

Notes 1.  Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv [hereinafter BA-MA], ref. RW5/654, Nachrichtendienst und Spionageabwehr bis zum Weltkrieg, 1866–1870, p. 13. 2. Ibid., 1890–1905, p. 71. 3. Archives départementales du Bas-Rhin [hereinafter ADBR], ref. 30AL60, Prussian Minister of War von Heeringen to the Alsace-Lorraine Statthalter (General Governor), 26 April 1913. 4. Ibid., Minister of War von Falkenhayn to Statthalter, 18 February 1914. 5.  Colonel Walter Nicolai, Forces secrètes, Paris: Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Critique, 1932, p. 122. 6. Gérald Sawicki, Les Services de renseignements à la frontière franco-allemande (1871–1914), PhD (Nancy II University), 2006, pp. 120–177, 225–244. 7. BA-MA, ref. RW5/654, Nachrichtendienst und Spionageabwehr bis zum Weltkrieg, 1906–1914, pp. 102(b)–104. 8. Ibid., p. 106. 9.  Markus Pöhlmann, “Le renseignement allemand en guerre: structures et opérations”, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, No. 232, October–December 2008, p. 19. 10. Colonel Walter Nicolai, Forces secrètes, p. 122. 11.  ADBR, ref. 121AL868, Report from the Director of police services (Strasburg city districts), 26 October 1922; Henri Domelier, Au GQG allemand, Paris: La Renaissance du Livre, 1919, pp. 176–177. 12. Gérald Sawicki, Les Services de renseignements à la frontière franco-allemande, pp. 237–244. 13. Jean Tillet, Dans les coulisses de la guerre. Espionnage. Contre-espionnage, Paris: Imprimerie du Réveil économique, 1933, p. 30; Jean Bardanne, La presse et l’espionnage, Paris: Éditions Baudinière, 1939, p. 22. 14. Henri Domelier, Au GQG allemand, pp. 176, 183. 15. Ibid., pp. 178, 180–181; Jean Tillet, Dans les coulisses de la guerre, p. 26; Jean Bardanne, La presse et l’espionnage, p. 16.

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87

16. Hans Witte, “Von der Geheimen Feldpolizei”, in Wolfgang Förster (ed.), Kämpfer an vergessenen Fronten, Berlin: Deutsche Buchvertriebsstelle, 1931, pp. 466–474. 17.  Service historique de la Défense, Archives de la Guerre [hereinafter SHD GR], Fonds de Moscou, 738, 302, “L’espionnage et le contre-espionnage allemand”, Report by Commissaire spécial (special superintendent/agent) Lemée. 18. Ibid., 621, 3433, Report from deputy Commissaire spécial Domercq, 15 February 1919. 19. Ibid., Note to the General Staff, 7 March 1919. 20. Ibid., Report to Allied HQ, 25 January 1919. 21. ADBR, ref. 22AL46, Conferences concerning the organisation of counter-intelligence, 1 February 1915. 22. SHD GR, Fonds de Moscou, 738, 302, L’espionnage…. 23.  Emmanuel Debruyne and Elise Rezsöhazy, “‘La main sinistre’. Police secrète allemande et taupes belges. 1914–1918”, Cahiers Inlichtingenstudies, No. 5, 2015, p. 18. 24. Henri Domelier, Au GQG allemand, p. 177. 25. Emmanuel Debruyne and Elise Rezsöhazy, “‘La main sinistre’”, pp. 18, 20. 26. ADBR, ref. 116AL168, From the Chief of Staff of the Albrecht Army Group, 24 June 1917. 27. Jürgen Kraus, Die feldgraue Uniformierung des deutschen Heeres 1907– 1918, Osnabrück: Biblio Verlag, 1999. 28. ADBR, ref. 116AL69, Geheime Feldpolizeistelle in Strasburg 1917–1918. 29. Colonel Nicolai, Forces secrètes, p. 123. 30. ADBR, ref. 116AL68, Poster from the GFP team of the Albrecth Army Group, 24 February 1918. 31. Markus Pöhlmann, “Le renseignement allemand en guerre”, pp. 19–20. 32. Jean Bardanne, La presse et l’espionnage, pp. 17–18, 21–23. 33. Colonel Nicolai, Forces secrètes, p. 126. 34. Ibid., p. 128. 35. Henri Domelier, Au GQG allemand, p. 206; Jean Tillet, Dans les coulisses de la guerre, pp. 28–29. 36. Gérald Sawicki, “Paoli Schwartz, le ‘dernier prisonnier de guerre allemand’ de la Première Guerre mondiale”, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, No. 233, January–March 2009, pp. 21–35. 37. SHD GR, Fonds de Moscou, 738, 302, L’espionnage…. 38. Aka “mouton” (sheep), a prisoner placed in the same cell to extract confessions from another detainee. 39. Henri Domelier, Au GQG allemand, pp. 181–183. 40. Gérald Sawicki, “Les services de renseignements”, pp. 447–451.



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41. Ibid., pp. 414, 455–456. 42. SHD GR, Fonds de Moscou, 1129, 1387, Summary report on the cooperation between special border force superintendents and intelligence officers in preparation for mobilisation, pp. 3, 7. 43. Colonel Nicolai, Forces secrètes, p. 121. 44. Ibid., p. 123. 45. ADBR, ref. 22AL46, Report from the Police Director of the ChâteauSalins district, 14 January 1915. 46. Colonel Nicolai, Forces secrètes, pp. 185–188. 47. Ibid., pp. 143–144. 48.  For instance with the dismantling of the network organised by Edith Cavell and Philippe Baucq, the suppression of the Jaquet Committee in 1915 or the arrest of Gabrielle Petit in 1916. 49.  Emmanuel Debruyne, “Combattre l’occupant en Belgique et dans les départements français occupés en 1914–1918. Une ‘résistance’ avant la lettre?” Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire, No. 115, July–September 2012, pp. 15–30; Colonel Nicolai, Forces secrètes, p. 140. 50. Ibid., p. 184. 51. Gérald Sawicki, “Les services de renseignements”, pp. 279–282. 52. ADBR, ref. 30AL60, Report from the Lower-Alsace Police Presidency, 29 May 1909. 53. Jean Bardanne, La presse et l’espionnage, pp. 16–17. 54. Archives départementales de Moselle, ref. 2AL65, Henri Waegelé file. 55. Colonel Nicolai, Forces secrètes, pp. 122–123. 56.  Werner Berg, “Interessante Fälle aus der Arbeit der Geheimen Feldpolizei”, in Friedrich Felger (ed.), Was wir vom Weltkrieg nicht wissen, Berlin and Leipzig: Wilhelm Andermann Verlag, 1929, p. 106. 57. Jean Bardanne, La presse et l’espionnage, p. 17. 58. Ibid., pp. 18–19. 59. Henri Koch-Kent, Vu et entendu. Souvenirs d’une époque controversée, 1912–1940, Luxembourg: Hermann, 1983, pp. 40–41. 60. SHD GR, Fonds de Moscou, 621, 3433, Note on Messrs. Steinmetz, Muller and Waegelé. 61. Jean Tillet, Dans les coulisses de la guerre, pp. 26–27. 62. Charles Lucieto, En missions spéciales. Mémoires d’un agent des services secrets de l’Entente, Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1930, p. 294. 63. SHD GR, Fonds de Moscou, 621, 3433, Report from deputy Commissaire spécial Domercq, 15 February 1919. 64.  Cf. Robert Winter, Die geheime Feldpolizei. Die Abwehrpolizei des Feldheeres, Wolfenbüttel: Melchior-Verlag, 2013.

CHAPTER 7

Disarmed and Captive: Greek Gendarmes in Görlitz Anastasios Zografos

During the summer of 1916, Greece found itself crushed under the weight of a world war in which it was not actually involved. This unfortunate state of affairs resulted from numerous events having taken place over the previous 12 months. In October 1915, the situation in the Balkans was critical for the Entente Powers: the Dardanelles campaign had proved far from victorious and Serbia was being overrun by enemy troops while Greece remained neutral. However, Eleftherios Venizelos’s decision to allow Allied armies to land in Thessaloniki transformed one of the largest cities in Greece into a vast military base.1 Gradually, the presence of the Allies in Macedonia began to look like an occupation involving, among other humiliating actions, the disarmament of Greek troops, the arrest of Greek citizens and the generally arrogant behaviour of Allied soldiers.2 A few months later, the situation became even more difficult for Greece when German and Bulgarian forces invaded its territory. Having occupied Rupel since May 1916, the armies of the Central Powers

A. Zografos (*)  PhD in Military History, Limassol, Cyprus © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_7

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were ordered to march into Eastern Macedonia on 17 August 1916. Neither King Constantine nor the Greek Prime Minister expressed any protest against the memorandum submitted to Athens by the German and Bulgarian ambassadors.3 The next day, they even required the commander of the 4th Army Corps stationed there to “gather all forces at the headquarters of divisions and evacuate all forts […] so as to avoid any kind of confrontation [with foreign troops]”.4 All officers of the 4th Army Corps subsequently made their subordinates leave their entrenched positions in Macedonia and retire before the advancing German and Bulgarian soldiers. This Greek retreat allowed the Bulgarians to implement their policy of ethnic cleansing. Indeed, only 2 days after their entry into Greece, the commander of the 4th Army Corps informed the Minister of Armies that Bulgarians were behaving aggressively not only towards Greek troops but also the local population, who consequently fled the countryside to take refuge in Serres, Drama and Kavalla.5 On the very day of his arrival in Drama (19 August 1916), Gendarmerie Captain Ioannis Papadakis noted the following scene in his wartime diary: A crowd of peasants came to the police station to report plunder, commandeering, assaults, rapes and all manner of lawless violence on the part of Bulgarians.6

Meanwhile in Athens, the rift between Eleftherios Venizelos and King Constantine grew wider with each passing day and created the likelihood of a “Venizelist” uprising.7 Nevertheless, those in the capital who considered the events in Eastern Macedonia as tantamount to treason were crushed under the weight of royalist propaganda and the boot of clandestine paramilitaries faithful to the king.8 In this tense climate, the capture of the 4th Army Corps and Gendarmerie forces in Eastern Macedonia, only a short time afterwards, provided clear evidence that the Greek government was now, in the summer of 1916, only a spectator in terms of the developments taking place in its own territory. Yet how were Greek gendarmes actually captured by the Germans? What was their captivity experience in Görlitz? Finally, yet equally important, when and how did they return to Greece?

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Capture From the early days of the German and Bulgarian invasion of Macedonia, the situation of the 4th Army Corps and the gendarmes posted in the region was disastrous. The rapid advance of invaders and the entrapment of Greek troops, confined to local towns without means of communication or proper supplies, soon turned this into a tragedy. On 22 August 1916, the commander of the 5th Division surrounded by Bulgarian forces in Drama sent a letter to the commander of the 4th Army Corps in which he simply wrote: “My situation is hopeless. I cannot put up any resistance”.9 At the same time, local authorities were equally powerless to manage the situation since Macedonian gendarmes in all towns and villages were being disarmed by the Bulgarians. The presence of the Greek state in the region had simply been erased. Long after his liberation from Görlitz, non-commissioned Gendarmerie officer Stylianos Kandilákes remembered his experience of late August 1916 when, just as he was trying to reach the village to which he was assigned, he was stopped, disarmed and instructed by Bulgarian troops to follow six fellow gendarmes to Drama, where they would be confined.10 In this sorry context, Greek troops could only turn to the government for instruction. Commander-in-Chief Ioannis Chatzopoulos kept sending desperate pleas from Kavalla to Athens underlining the necessity to transfer the whole army corps to southern Greece. Yet the government preferred not to answer. On 9 September 1916, the last line of communication— the telegraph station in Kavalla—was handed over to the British who had in the meantime blockaded the seaport.11 From then on, a process was engaged which would lead to the capture of 6100 privates, 430 officers and 400 gendarmes (of whom 10 to 12 were commissioned officers).12 The next day, Major von Schweinitz presented Chatzopoulos with the decisions of the German High Command; these included the transfer of Greek troops to northern districts under Bulgarian occupation so as to separate them fully from the Allied armies and prevent any possible collaboration. However, playing for time and trying to avoid capture by the Bulgarians, the commander of the 4th Army Corps requested one German officer ask his superiors about the possibility of transferring Greek forces to Germany instead, where they would be stationed until the end of the hostilities. The German officer promised to bring an answer the very next day.13 Ioannis Chatzopoulos then summoned division commanders who had already resisted capture by the Bulgarians. Eventually, all agreed

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to surrender to the Entente Powers with a request to be transferred to southern Greece. The British were ready to grant this request but opposing Greek factions involved in the National Schism sabotaged the plan and the last chance of remaining free vanished for the army corps.14 During the night of 10/11 December 1916, with Greek soldiers already beginning to embark, an announcement was made that only soldiers volunteering to join the National Defence Movement were to be allowed on board15; this forced Chatzopoulos to halt the operation and order his troops back to barracks.16 The next day, Major von Schweinitz informed Chatzopoulos that his suggestion had been accepted by the German High Command. The agreement, signed between the two men, provided for the transfer to Germany of all privates and officers of the 4th Army Corps, together with their weapons and ammunition. It also included gendarmes who were therefore captured along with their army colleagues. However, the status granted to Greeks was not that of prisoners of war but of “guests of the Kaiser”.17 On hearing the news, Gendarmerie Captain Ioannis Papadakis went to see the Commander-in-Chief in order to protest against an accord that compelled his men to follow the army corps to Germany: “The Gendarmerie is an independent force. It obeys different orders. It cannot leave the town”. This daring objection was met with a scathing reply: “Independent force? Humbug! I’m in charge here – your only government and king here is me”.18 Chatzopoulos’ furious reaction left the Gendarmerie captain, who was trying to save his men, with no option. His protest to the German consul proved to be just as fruitless.19 Non-commissioned Gendarmerie officer Stylianos Kandilákes likewise felt the extreme anguish of his men and noted it in his diary of the same date.20 Yet even a belated reaction from the government in Athens remained ineffectual.21 In the following days, all Greek troops were thus gathered in Drama where their transfer to Germany began. In point of fact, “royalist officers seemed enthusiastic”,22 but the whole army corps was in complete disarray. As Ioannis Papadakis wrote in his diary: All kinds of war material are now being sold on street corners for a mess of pottage; gypsies have broken into a number of our depots and stolen rifles and other war equipment.23

On 15 September 1916, the first train left Drama to take Greek prisoners to their “guest residence” in Görlitz.24 Over the following

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days, two to three trains crammed with Greek privates and officers left daily.25 On 27 September 1916, at 3.30 a.m., came the turn of Ioannis Papadakis and his gendarmes to leave the city after having handed over the premises of the Gendarmerie Directorate to the Bulgarians.26 This was a poignant moment for all men and Ioannis Papadakis, forlorn, said goodbye to Eastern Macedonia, as he saw it, for the last time under Greek sovereignty.27 The train stopped first in Adrianople (Eastern Thrace). Bulgarians had come to the station to watch but they were not the only ones; relatives from this region beyond the Greek border had also come to embrace their sons, fathers or fiancés.28 Two hours later, the train started again, travelled across Bulgaria and, after several stops where gendarmes were strictly forbidden to get off or speak to anyone, arrived in Belgrade on 30 September 1916. There, they all disembarked and, under escort of Austrian officers, were led to hotels.29 On October 1916, the gendarmes went through Semlino,30 then on into Austro-Hungarian territory and up to Oppeln,31 where they underwent a long treatment of disinfection. Three days later, on 9 October 1916 at 7 p.m., the Greek gendarmes finally reached the town of Görlitz32 where they were led, preceded by a fanfare of German musicians, to their internment camp.33 Its entrance had been decorated with garlands of flowers and a large sign featuring the word “Welcome” in Greek.34 There began a period of captivity for the 400 gendarmes that was destined to last for more than 2 years. What was life like in Görlitz?

Life as Guests of the Kaiser Since its capture in Eastern Macedonia, the Gendarmerie battalion, divided into five companies as ordered by Chatzopoulos,35 suffered the same fate as the men of the 4th Army Corps. As soon as they arrived in Görlitz, some 390 gendarmes settled36 side by side with their army comrades in what was in fact an internment camp vacated only a few days before by Russian prisoners of war. The place was located to the east of Görlitz, rather far from the city centre.37 However, the dozen or so commissioned and non-commissioned Gendarmerie officers were settled outside the military camp, as suggested by General Erich Ludendorff himself.38 Ioannis Papadakis, after a short stay at the Europe hotel, was thus allowed to rent a room from a local woman for 25 drachmas a month.39

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Accommodation was generally well prepared, and the local authorities vaunted it in the press for propaganda purposes.40 The internment camp was vast since it had been designed to house up to 12,000 prisoners of war. It featured large dormitories equipped with proper heating and lighting, numerous sanitary blocks, large kitchens and a nearby hospital that was easily accessible to those that were sick—designed to give the impression that Greek prisoners of war enjoyed the same lifestyle as German soldiers in peacetime conditions. Officers were even allowed to train their men via physical exercise.41 However, despite the living conditions and the decent behaviour of the local population towards Greek prisoners,42 Hellenic gendarmes in Silesia were confronted from the outset with two major problems: scant food and extreme cold weather, both of which impaired the health of even the toughest of men. From his early days in Görlitz, Ioannis Papadakis noticed the near complete absence of food. Ten days after the arrival of his Gendarmerie battalion in Germany, the Gendarmerie captain wrote this entry in his diary: “Soldiers have started to complain. Their food is really insufficient and the quality so terrible that even the poorest Greek is not accustomed to such”.43 Such starvation, reserved for Greek gendarmes and soldiers, was highlighted in numerous complaints sent to the Prime Minister by the men’s relatives and a series of articles in the press.44 In the meantime, Greek gendarmes accustomed to mild Mediter­ ranean weather were more vulnerable to the harshness of a German winter and suffered as a consequence of the very low temperatures. Ioannis Papadakis describes the kind of cold experienced in Görlitz as totally unknown to Greeks.45 Some gendarmes actually died in the hospital as a result of diseases caused by the extreme cold.46 Furthermore, gendarmes also had to work several hours a day from the very beginning of their stay, as German headquarters were keen to use the Greek workforce for voluntary work, paid at the same rate as local wages.47 Yet this voluntary work gradually became forced employment in German factories supporting the war effort. In February 1917, Greek gendarmes also had to remove snow from the city streets.48 Others manufactured shoes or tailored clothes inside the camp, providing for both Greek prisoners and German soldiers.49 Some even had to leave Görlitz, either to perform public work or to join the workforce of the Krupp factories in Essen.50 On another level, gendarmes still loyal to King Constantine and guided by royalist officers were given the task of “policing” political

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ideas inside the camp to make sure it remained staunchly anti-Venizelist. These gendarmes kept watch over their fellow countrymen, always ready to report any pro-Venizelist action.51 They therefore introduced the National Schism to Görlitz and made the lives of their political enemies unbearable. Venizelists, or those merely suspected on account of their origin, like the gendarmes from Crete, had to live through the dark days of oppression in Germany. Given his own political leanings, Gendarmerie Captain Ioannis Papadakis spent Christmas 1916 in complete isolation.52 A few months later, he was even arrested and imprisoned, together with other Venizelist officers, in a fortress in Westphalia from which he was not released until the end of the war.53 Other Venizelist gendarmes considered dangerous to the camp were also severely punished.54 However, throughout this period of captivity that was not devoid of coercion, despite German promises made in September 1916, passing moments of entertainment allowed the men to forget their situation. The two officers’ clubs in town were reserved to army and gendarmerie commissioned officers55 but privates and NCOs were allowed to walk around town, go boating on the Neisse with local women,56 eat at the brasseries or even attend a theatre evening specifically given in honour of the “guests of the Kaiser”.57 Reading the daily Görlitz News, written in Greek, also provided entertainment and information. This periodical was created a month after the arrival of the 4th Army Corps in Germany58 and soon became the favourite newspaper of Greek prisoners, including gendarmes.59 Moreover, both gendarmes and soldiers were allowed to practice traditional singing and dancing, a form of entertainment that even raised the interest of German academics who in July 1917 recorded their songs and the Greek dialects spoken in Görlitz.60 Eventually came liberation—for Venizelists and royalists alike. How were they welcomed home? Was the treatment suffered by gendarmes the same experienced by the rest of the army?

Homecoming and a Damaged Reputation News of the Armistice found the Görlitz prisoners in the throes of political fighting. Venizelist gendarmes were still being persecuted under the permanent surveillance of their royalist colleagues. When the Armistice was announced, a number of royalist officers refused to allow the Army Corps to return to Greece until the Venizelist government had actually

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signed a decree of amnesty for all officers in Görlitz. According to their plan, preventing their men from returning home after more than 2 years in Germany (late September 1916 to November 1918) would trigger protests from relatives in Greece and put pressure on the government to sign the decree.61 Such attitudes, held by officers, caused a rebellion in the Görlitz camp at a time when the Spartakist revolt had already broken out in Germany and encouraged revolutionary behaviour among Greek servicemen. Hellenic soldiers and gendarmes expressed their determination to return home immediately by expelling officers from the camp, blocking the camp’s entrance and appointing their own new leader. This revolt lasted a month. Yet German authorities eventually managed to crush it, leaving five dead among the Greek rebels and chaos among the rest of the troops.62 In December 1918, most Greeks had left Görlitz within a period of a few days. On foot or driving cars, alone or in groups, more than 5000 “guests of the Kaiser” set off to return to their homeland. After a long journey through war-ravaged rural districts and cities, the greater part ended up in Fiume, with others in Varna or Constantza,63 where they waited for ships to take them to Corfu, Patras or Crete.64 The evacuation of the remaining elements of the Gendarmerie battalion and 4th Army Corps from Görlitz lasted until 24 February 1919 when sick gendarmes and others who had not left Germany in December 1918 finally boarded trains which took them to Fiume where they too were transferred to Greece.65 However, some Görlitz gendarmes stayed in Germany for good. Sixteen of them had died during their period of detainment and were buried in the municipal cemetery66 while others having found a new homeland stayed to begin a new life; such was the case of Gendarmerie Captain Pantelis Chrissoulis who became a chauffeur, started a family but eventually returned to Greece in the 1930s.67 For most of those who returned to Greece in 1918–1919, the welcome they received at the hands of the government, the people and their Greek fellow soldiers was far from triumphal. Considered as cowards or even traitors, gendarmes had to face the bitter irony of their countrymen; with Greek young men having offered their lives to the Great Idea,68 gendarmes had to live with the infamous reputation of having comfortably waited for the end of hostilities in an internment camp as “voluntary prisoners”.69 Arriving in Greece, all former Görlitz detainees were interned in a military camp in Crete where they underwent repeated interrogations for 6 months by both military and political

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authorities.70 In June 1919, nearly all soldiers and gendarmes from Görlitz were finally released and demobilised. However, for 320 officers and NCOs, accused of a shameful surrender, the ordeal went on for a further year. A dozen of them were even court martialled. Finally, in July 1920, eight officers were sentenced to death while the others were dismissed from the Greek Army.71 In the extremely tense context in which the Görlitziotés72 returned home, only a handful of gendarmes were able to avoid sarcasm and dismissal. These were the four officers and NCOs faithful to Venizelos who had been incarcerated in Werl (Westphalia). A few days after their arrival in Greece, those gendarmes were welcomed by the Vice President of the Greek Government who congratulated them on their heroic and patriotic behaviour as well as for their loyalty towards Venizelos during their time of captivity.73 They were even rewarded and promoted to higher ranks.74 Yet later, in November 1920, the arrival to power of anti-Venizelists allowed all Görlitz officers, dismissed after the summer of 1919, to be reintegrated into the army and even promoted as had the others a year earlier.75 In conclusion, the gendarmes of Eastern Macedonia captured in the autumn of 1916 took the same road to Görlitz, alongside troops of the 4th Army Corps. There, interned together in the same military camp, they experienced a harsh life with moments of relief punctuated by hard work, drills and days of extreme isolation or even prison incarceration, especially the Venizelists among them. Furthermore, those men had imported with them into Germany the National Schism of 1916 and the underlying conflicts of Greek society that it revealed. After their liberation, some gendarmes remained in Germany but those who returned to Greece had to live with the stigma of having been a Görlitz prisoner, which for the Greek people and Greek authorities was associated with cowardice, if not treason. Indeed, the capture of the 4th Army Corps and the Eastern Macedonia Gendarmerie remained, long after the Great War, one of the most humiliating periods in Greek history. For many years, the Görlitziotés had to endure bitter irony from their fellow countrymen, in particular of the press. New heights of contempt were even reached when such men later assumed positions of prominence in public bodies or claimed damages from the state as victims of the Great War.76 Acknowledgments   My special thanks go to Professor Hubert Heyriès (Paul Valéry-Montpellier III University) for his advice and suggested corrections.

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Notes

1. Vassilis Kolonas and Eric Auzoux (eds.), La Ville de Thessalonique durant la première guerre mondiale, 1915–1918, Thessaloniki: Ministry of Culture, 1989, p. 4. 2. See in particular Γενικά αρχεία του κράτους (Ελλάδα)/General State Archives (Greece) [hereinafter AGE], Political Secretariat of the Prime Minister, Envelope 14, Civilian complaint dated 12 November 1917, No. 1217, pp. 1–4; Angeliki Dema-Demetriou (ed.), History of the Greek Army’s Participation in the First World War, 1914–1918 [title in greek], Athens: Historical Directorate of the Greek Army, 1993, pp. 62–83; Georgios Leontaritis, “Greece and the First World War” [title in greek], in Georgios Christopoulos and Ioannis Bastias (eds.), History of the Greek Nation [title in greek], Athens: Éditions d’Athènes, 1978, Vol. 15, pp. 29–33. 3. Polychronis Enepekides, Glory and discord, Athens: Zacharopoulos, 1992, pp. 492–493. 4. “Αποσύρατε τμήματα Δ΄ Σώματος Στρατού, ως και ολοκλήρους ϕρουράς ερυμάτων, εις έδρας Μεραρχιών […] προς αποϕυγήν πάσης προστριβής”. Angeliki Dema-Demetriou (ed.), History of the Greek Army’s Participation in the First World War, p. 93 (author’s own translation). 5. Ibid., pp. 94–98. 6. “Πλήθος χωρικών προσέρχονται εις την αστυνομίαν και καταγγέλουν αρπαγάς, επιτάξεις αυθαιρέτους, τραυματισμούς, εκβιάσεις, βιασμούς και παντός είδους βιαιοπραγίας εκ μέρους των βουλγάρων κατά των ελλήνων χωρικών”. Ioannis Papadakis, The Unknown War Diary of a Cretan Officer [title in greek], Manoles Papadogiannis (ed.), Thessaloniki: Manoles Papadogiannis, 1990, p. 39 (author’s own translation). 7. Georgios Leontaritis, “Greece and the First World War”, pp. 35–38. 8.  Ibid., pp. 38–40; Ελληνικό λογοτεχνικό και ιστορικό αρχείοΜορϕωτικό ίδρυμα εθνικής τραπέζης, Historical and Literary Greek Archive—Educational Fund of the Central Bank [hereinafter ELIAMIET], Melas family archive, Georgios Melas, My Notebook, 1916–1917 [title in greek], pp. 3–5; Gerassimos Alexatos, The Greeks of Görlitz [title in greek], Thessaloniki: Despina Kyriakidi, 2010, pp. 36–49. 9. Είμαι απελπισμένος. Δεν είμαι εις θέσιν να κάμω άμυναν. Angeliki Dema-Demetriou (ed.), History of the Greek Army’s Participation in the First World War, 1914–1918, p. 96 (author’s own translation). 10. Stylianos Kandylákes, In Görlitz, 31 December 1917…; Captivity Notebook of the Venetian Officer Stylianos Kandylákes in Germany of the Kaiser [title in greek], Gerassimos Alexatos, Stratos Dordanas, and Manoles Kandylákes (eds.), Thessaloniki: Kiriakidis Éditions, 2014, p. 14.



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11. Gerassimos Alexatos, The Greeks of Görlitz, pp. 55–56. 12. Ibid., p. 79; Stylianos Kandylákes, In Görlitz, 31 December 1917…, p. 14. A brief description regarding the capture of the Greek forces in Eastern Macedonia is also included in Zografos Anastasios, « 1917: l’année où la Discorde nationale dépassa les frontières de l’État grec », Revue d’Allemagne et des pays de langue allemande [En ligne], 49-2 | 2017, mis en ligne le 29 décembre 2018, consulté le 04 septembre 2019. http:// journals.openedition.org/allemagne/580;  https://doi.org/10.4000/ allemagne.580. 13. Ibid., pp. 52–57; Angeliki Dema-Demetriou (ed.), History of the Greek Army’s Participation in the First World War, 1914–1918, p. 100. 14. The National Schism is the standard historical phrase referring to the conflict between King Constantine and Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos during WWI, which ultimately led to the creation by Venizelos of a “second government” in Thessaloniki. 15. The National Defence Movement was the name of the Venizelist uprising in Thessaloniki (late August 1916). It led to the local creation of a provisional government. 16. Gerassimos Alexatos, The Greeks of Görlitz, pp. 57–62; Angeliki DemaDemetriou (ed.), History of the Greek Army’s Participation in the First World War, 1914–1918, p. 101. 17. Id. 18. “Η Χωροϕυλακή είναι δύναμις ανεξάρτητος από το σώμα, έχει άλλας διαταγάς και δεν δύναται να εγκαταλείψει την πόλιν. […] Ανεξάρτητος, αυτά είναι κουραϕέξαλα […]. Εγώ είμαι τώρα και Βασιλεύς, και Κυβέρνησις” (Ioannis Papadakis, The Unknown War Diary of a Cretan Officer, p. 53) (author’s own translation). 19. Ibid., pp. 53–54. 20. Stylianos Kandylákes, In Görlitz, 31 December 1917…, p. 15. 21. Angeliki Dema-Demetriou (ed.), History of the Greek Army’s Participation in the First World War, 1914–1918, pp. 102–103. 22. “Οι Βασιλόϕρονες Αξιωματικοί εϕαίνοντο ενθουσιασμένοι”. Stylianos Kandylákes, In Görlitz, 31 December 1917…, p. 15 (author’s own translation). 23. “Υλικά του στρατού παντός είδους πωλούνται εις τας οδούς αντί πινακίου ϕακής, εις μερικάς δε αποθήκας εισήλθον και τσιγγάνοι και διήρπαζον και όπλα και λοιπά υλικά”. Ioannis Papadakis, The Unknown War Diary of a Cretan officer, p. 55 (author’s own translation). 24. Gerassimos Alexatos, The Greeks of Görlitz, p. 78. 25. Stylianos Kandylákes, In Görlitz, 31 December 1917…, p. 15. 26. Ioannis Papadakis, The Unknown War Diary of a Cretan Officer, p. 63. 27. Id.



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28. Ibid., p. 64. 29. Ibid., pp. 64–68. 30. Then a town on the Austria–Hungary border; today a neighbourhood of Belgrade. Gerassimos Alexatos, The Greeks of Görlitz, p. 78. 31. Now the Polish town of Opole. Id. 32.  Located in the east of Germany, Görlitz is now a border town with Poland. Id. 33. Ioannis Papadakis, The Unknown War Diary of a Cretan Officer, pp. 68–70. 34. Gerassimos Alexatos, The Greeks of Görlitz, p. 86. 35. Ioannis Papadakis, The Unknown War Diary of a Cretan Officer, p. 53. 36. Stylianos Kandylákes, In Görlitz, 31 December 1917…, pp. 15–16. 37. Gerassimos Alexatos, The Greeks of Görlitz, p. 92; Ioannis Papadakis, The Unknown War Diary of a Cretan Officer, p. 70. 38. Ibid., p. 87. 39. Ibid., p. 70. 40. “Visit in Greek camp”, News from Görlitz, No. 40, 20 December 1916, p. 4. 41. For a general account of the Görlitz camp, see Gerassimos Alexatos, The Greeks of Görlitz, pp. 92–97. 42. Ioannis Papadakis, The Unknown War Diary of a Cretan Officer, p. 71. 43. “Η γκρίνια ήρχισε μεταξύ των στρατιωτών. Η τροϕή των ανεπαρκεστάτη και ποιότητος αγνώστου και εις τον πτωχότερον έλληνα”. Id. (author’s own translation). 44.  AGE, Political Secretariat of the Prime Minister, Envelope 124, Complaint to the Prime Minister, 16 July 1918, No. 16775; “The prisoners in Görlitz. Their miserable life”, Macedonia, No. 2219, 16 March 1918, p. 1. 45. Ioannis Papadakis, The Unknown War Diary of a Cretan Officer, p. 72. 46. Three gendarmes died of pneumonia, one of bronchitis and eight others from tuberculosis. For a summary of losses, see Gerassimos Alexatos, The Greeks of Görlitz, pp. 371–385. 47. Ibid., p. 87. 48. Ioannis Papadakis, The Unknown War Diary of a Cretan Officer, p. 77. 49. Gerassimos Alexatos, The Greeks of Görlitz, p. 94. 50. “Life in Görlitz”, Rizospastis, No. 312, 3 June 1918, p. 1; “The prisonners of Görlitz. Their miserable life”, Macedonia, No. 2219, 16 March 1918, p. 1. 51. “Görlitz case in military court”, Empros, No. 8486, 31 May 1920, p. 2; “Greek soldiers’ life in Görlitz”, Macedonia, No. 2576, 20 March 1919, pp. 1–2. 52. Ioannis Papadakis, The Unknown War Diary of a Cretan Officer, pp. 74–75.

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53.  “Görlitz case in militart court”, Empros, No. 8489, 3 June 1920, p. 2; Εθνικό ίδρυμα ερευνών και μελετών “Ελευθέριος K. Βενιζέλος”/ Eleftherios K. Venizelos National Foundation for Research and Studies [hereinafter FNREEV], Papadakis Report, Athens, 14 February 1919, p. 9. 54. “Görlitz case in military court”, Empros, No. 8486, 31 May 1920, p. 2; Stylianos Kandylákes, In Görlitz, 31 décembre 1917…, p. 146. For more information about the “civil war” between Venizelists and Royalists in Görlitz, see also Zografos Anastasios, « 1917: l’année où la Discorde nationale dépassa les frontières de l’État grec », Revue d’Allemagne et des pays de langue allemande. 55. Gérassimos Alexatos, The Greeks of Görlitz, p. 170; Angeliki Chronopoulou Archive, Wartime diaries of John Chatzipanagos, Europeana 1914–1918, http://www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en/contributions/17712 (5 January 2016). 56. “Görlitz case in military court”, Empros, No. 8491, 5 June 1920, p. 2; Maria Katsarou-Nassiakou Archive, Photograph 4, Europeana 1914– 1918,  http://www.europeana1914-1918.eu/en/contributions/17125 (5 January 2016). 57. “In Germany”, Year 1917 Greek Calendar, Görlitz: Emil Glauber and Dionissios Agapitos, 1917, p. 36; Gerassimos Alexatos, The Greeks of Görlitz, pp. 146–148. 58. For more detailed information, Ibid., pp. 97–107. 59. “Görlitz case in military court”, Empros, No. 8465, 10 May 1920, p. 3. 60. Gerassimos Alexatos, The Greeks of Görlitz, pp. 122–137. 61.  FNREEV, Papadakis Report, Athens, 14 February 1919, pp. 5–9; Report by Gendarmerie Captain A.K. Chrissomalos, Görlitz, December 1918, pp. 1–4; Stylianos Kandylákes, In Görlitz, 31 December 1917…, pp. 74–75. A brief description of the departure of the Greek troops from Görlitz is also included in Zografos Anastasios, « 1917: l’année où la Discorde nationale dépassa les frontières de l’État grec », Revue d’Allemagne et des pays de langue allemande. 62. Ibid.; Gerassimos Alexatos, The Greeks of Görlitz, pp. 176–192; “Greek soldiers’ revolution in Görlitz”, Rizospastis, No. 309, 23 July 1932, p. 2. 63. Ibid., pp. 193–195; “Coming back from Görlitz”, Empros, No. 7985, 5 January 1919, p. 2; “Returning from Görlitz”, Empros, No. 7963, 12 December 1918, p. 2. 64. “Incidents happened in Görlitz”, Empros, No. 7973, 22 December 1918, p. 2; AGE, Political Secretariat of the Prime Minister, Envelope 238, Telegram to the prefect of Corfu, 20 December 1918, No. 365. 65. Gerassimos Alexatos, The Greeks of Görlitz, pp. 199–201. 66. For a summary of losses, Ibid., pp. 371–385; FNREEV, Request from the Committee of Görlitz gendarmes, Drama, 27 March 1934, p. 1.

102  A. ZOGRAFOS 67. Testimony of Maria Mannak, Ibid., pp. 234–241. 68. The Great Idea was the unification of all Greeks within a single nation state. 69. “Görlitz”, Macedonia, No. 6289, 4 January 1930, p. 1. 70. “Coming from Görlitz and driven to Souda”, Empros, No. 7983, 3 January 1919, p. 1. 71. Gerassimos Alexatos, The Greeks of Görlitz, pp. 206–211. See also numerous articles published in Greek newspapers between May 9 and June 29, 1920. 72. The Greek nickname for Görlitz prisoners. 73. “Görlitz officers’ reception”, Empros, No. 8069, 31 January 1919, p. 2. See also, Zografos Anastasios, « 1917: l’année où la Discorde nationale dépassa les frontières de l’État grec », Revue d’Allemagne et des pays de langue allemande. 74. “Military promotions”, Empros, No. 8094, 27 April 1919, p. 4. 75. “Officers’ promotions”, Macedonia, No. 3169, 1 December 1920, p. 1. See also Gerassimos Alexatos, The Greeks of Görlitz, pp. 212–217. 76. See, among many other similar articles “Our hand glass. Shortly afterwards…”, Macedonia, No. 6238, 12 November 1929, p. 1; “Görlitz”, Macedonia, No. 6289, 4 January 1930, p. 1.

PART II

Police Forces on the Home Front

CHAPTER 8

Normal Police Work in Times of War: Really? The Case of Ille-et-Vilaine (Brittany, France) Jean-François Tanguy

Introduction “Police work goes on as usual in times of war”—this statement may seem unwarranted, fanciful or even provocative, but its meaning is simply factual. Under normal circumstances, a police force is first intended to enforce laws and regulations governing order and security, public peace and public health; this is administrative police work. Second, a police force is also expected to identify, seek and arrest offenders in cooperation with the justice system supervising its action; this is investigative and judicial police work. Factually, why should those two functions cease to operate in times of war? The only areas where they may be called into question are territories under enemy occupation where the remit of police work finds itself broadly redefined by compromise between national and international law.1 Yet ensuring the permanence of police work requires adequate resources. Finding the necessary numbers to maintain staff levels is

J.-F. Tanguy (*)  University of Rennes 2, Rennes, France © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_8

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problematic in times of a general mobilisation of men. In this perspective, the employment of women becomes a solution worthy of particular attention. While a number of assignments are simplified in wartime, others may, on the contrary, acquire unusual complexity. The issue at stake is often to determine which police authority is competent to act under exceptional circumstances when normal police services have retreated. In small towns and villages, the foremost answer was local mayors. Their omnipresence, though somewhat surprising, was one of the most important consequences of a total war situation in which police priorities and hierarchies soon had to be subordinated for efficiency.

Matching War and Police Duties In 1914, all French able-bodied men between the ages of 20 and 40 years, and some older men too, were conscripted to fight or at least take part in the war effort as part of various assignments to be carried out at the front as well as in civilian areas. This general mobilisation entailed major changes to police work. Several factors were at play. First, general mobilisation took away most of those young and active men who normally represent the main source of delinquency by enrolling them and stationing them in areas under military authority where deviant behaviour changed in nature and intensity but did not altogether disappear. Between 1914 and 1919, the army was thus faced with problems it could only partially manage (or manage with great difficulty, in some cases with zero efficiency).2 Second, general mobilisation also included individuals in charge of peacetime policing, that is, policemen and gendarmes. Since the profession recruited mostly young men, one issue was that most districts would be left without functioning forces of law and order, this was of course unacceptable—just as it would have been impossible and unacceptable to send all railway personnel to the front. As we shall see, several partial and unsatisfactory solutions were found. Third, though the overwhelming majority of potential delinquents had been incorporated into the armed forces, there remained some very deviant young men, younger than the age of conscription. In addition, crimes by women began to materialise—limited in extent but not negligible.

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Finally, yet of equal importance, the war effort covering the whole national territory required that special attention be paid to crimes and misdemeanours related to the war itself: acts of sabotage, espionage, spreading of defeatist ideas (with freedom of opinion being now strongly limited, even in democratic countries) and surveillance of enemy-owned businesses or businesses with the potential to help the enemy. In addition, issues arose due to social and economic turmoil, the displacement of populations, financial instability and the countless woes created by the state of war. All these necessarily increased the number of tasks facing the police. How could police forces keep a close watch on so many new and diverse areas with fewer staff and resources?

Staffing Levels Police work requires policemen. As shown by previous studies, police numbers in provincial urban districts, with the exception of very large cities such as Lyon or Marseille, had long remained scant and only experienced a modest, tentative rise after the 1870–1871 war.3 In Rennes, urban police numbers, which had remained below 16 officers in the days of the Second Empire, had nearly doubled to reach 29 men, including all ranking officers and secretaries (but not counting commissaires, police commissioners, that is, superintendents). Rennes numbered 52,000 inhabitants, which meant a ratio of 1 policeman for every 1800 citizens. Throughout subsequent decades and until the First World War, local commissaires centraux (chief constables) continued to request more personnel but municipal authorities, with one eye on their budgets, only partially granted such requests. On the eve of war, 1912 figures evidence a total of 62 men (ranking officers and secretaries included), that is, 1 policeman for every 1290 citizens—a meagre improvement over 40 years. As already mentioned, the outbreak of war created immediate staffing problems. Owing to their civilian status, police officers were not exempt from military duties and since most of them were of conscription age, urban police numbers were bound to collapse. However, state authorities had long perceived the problem and realised it was impossible to leave towns and cities, let alone rural districts, devoid of police. Art. 165 of the Ministerial Direction dated 20 June 1910 concerning mobilisation had provided for the possibility of placing a number of individuals, including police officers, in a state of “deferred enrolment”. This Direction was supplemented by a confidential circular dated 18 July

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1913, further defining practical arrangements. This system worked and numbers initially remained equal to their pre-war level—with all policemen in Rennes being officially “deferred”. Yet the early carnage of 1914 soon compelled mobilisation services to cancel such deferments, all the more swiftly on account of the necessity to “defer” other categories too, namely workers assigned to “special positions” in factories contributing to the industrial war effort. In Rennes, 19 policemen, including some of the youngest, were mobilised in February 1915. This number represented a fearful levy equal to 30% of the total number of police. No further mobilisations took place afterwards.4 What is a police commissioner to do when nearly one third of his men go missing? All possible solutions were envisaged. At first, the total amount of crime went down with urban police duties somewhat relieved. As early as 1914, daily police reports show a significant reduction in the number of thefts and violent assaults, not to mention homicides.5 This reduction raises one obvious question: was it due to crime decreasing or to neglect in the reporting of crime? Taking into account changes affecting priorities and the overall reduced levels of staff, a statistical bias was probably at work with the measuring tool being affected rather than what was actually being measured. Be this as it may, even this “artificial” reduction in crime was not enough to compensate for the other demands put on police, in particular the necessity to maintain a permanent repression of prostitution—now on the rise owing to a greater number of garrisoned men—and the necessity to undertake surveillance of railway stations and military convoys. Police auxiliaries therefore had to be recruited among non-mobilised men—a procedure allowed by a Ministerial Order dated 7 November 1914. However, the available pool of such men was very limited and recruitment never exceeded a dozen auxiliaries at a time. An additional hinderance was that such recruitments proved to be a direct burden on state finances, whereas the salaries of standard policemen were duly paid by local city budgets. As soon as the war was over, prefects were therefore keen to eliminate such costly jobs (“appointments of this nature drawing on the finances of the State can no longer be justified”)6 and resources, however small, soon became unavailable. Another solution to remedy insufficient police numbers was to close down some services, for instance one of the three smaller police stations created in the 1900s. The Bonne Nouvelle police station, situated in the very poor northern districts of Rennes, thus became a victim of cuts. At the same time, the

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decision was made to retain the police station situated at the railway station, a site seen as more strategic by military authorities and the Ministry of the Interior—as witness in this telegram: Numerous incidents are taking place in railway stations when trains carrying soldiers on leave go through them or stop. Convincing evidence confirms dubious individuals are responsible for unrest, crowding around soldiers as they board trains, enticing them to drink and feeding them with bad advice. You are instructed to maintain closest surveillance of railway stations and their vicinity [underlined in the original]; to enforce strictly regulations concerning public drunkenness; to identify, seek and arrest the said dubious individuals [idem]. You are also requested to coordinate with military authorities to arrange for soldiers on leave to find bread and non-alcoholic beverages without having to exit the station – even during long stops. Am most insistent on these instructions and invite you to report to me on corresponding measures taken.7

Nevertheless, even at this strategic station, night shift teams were reduced from four to only two men. From 9.30 p.m. to 10.30 p.m., both policemen were to do rounds in the neighbourhood, then fall back to their shelter where the outside lantern was switched off at midnight. Such limited presence was hardly likely to be efficient; neither was the close surveillance of railway stations where gendarmes were often overwhelmed by the number of military assignments and struggled to coordinate with police officers. In a city like Rennes, the Gendarmerie’s main wartime objective was to act as military police, with little time for anything else.8 An additional method to bolster numbers consisted of asking older policemen, those about to retire, to prolong their service. Between February 1915 and March 1919, 16 men actually went into retirement, a number virtually impossible to compensate for with new recruits. Overall numbers in Rennes thus fell to 27, that is, back to 1871 levels. In spite of significant pleading on the part of municipal authorities, all interested individuals firmly declined to prolong their police careers9—as witnessed in this remarkable exchange during a meeting of the municipal council: Mr. Leprince (councillor) – Given the lack of personnel in the municipal police, would it not be possible for the prefect to compel officers entitled to retire to remain in place until the end of hostilities?

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Mayor – I’m afraid regulations are positive on the subject, dear colleague; no one is in a position to force them to remain. I invited them to my office to discuss the matter; I told them we were bound to settle their pension in order not to delay promotion for their fellow officers but also that our council’s deliberation of December 17, 1915 did allow them to remain in place for the whole duration of the war – with full pay. It did not sway them and for immediate gains […] they have now preferred to leave the service which, for the past 25 years, has given them and their families the very means of subsistence; they exercised their right but certainly forgot their duty and I consider this decision – in those difficult times we live in – to be almost a desertion; I cannot believe these men to feel satisfied with their conscience after what they have done.10

The municipal pension code in Rennes provided for a full pension after 25 years of service. Most leavers were between 50 and 55, which meant many among them could reasonably hope, if still hardy enough, to find another paid occupation that would supplement their pension and thus soften the dire economic and financial conditions experienced by the French lower and middle classes in 1917.

Enlisting Women Only one solution to find substitute police officers remained. War forced the country to rely on its massively increased workforce of women, from the so-called munitionnettes (ammunition girls), toiling in armament factories, to farm girls later celebrated as Guardians—as in the title of Ernest Pérochon’s patriotic novel11; from streetcar drivers or bus ticket controllers to those depicted as cartoon characters, like Bécassine, designed to provide an example to children.12 Far less well-known were women in the police.13 Yet a large number of provincial towns and cities seem to have recruited women out of absolute necessity. In Rennes, no fewer than eight women were recruited between 1 December 1916 and 15 June 1918 (nearly half the number of mobilised men): six of them as orderlies, to allow their male colleagues to return to service on the streets, and two as secretaries,14 one of which, Madame Chevalier, was even appointed as secretary to the commissaire central (chief constable).15 Nearly all of them completed their duties well, as an internal report suggests:

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[…] Madame Chevalier, currently employed as auxiliary secretary in our central office; this person acts as a substitute with great dedication to her work and gives full satisfaction. […] Madame Pinault, secretary to the Sûreté office (criminal investigations), has specialised in classifying records, a thankless occupation which requires permanent concentration and a great sense of order.16

Still there was no surprise when, in the male-dominated context of the period, these women were abruptly laid off after the Armistice, with only a month’s notice and best wishes for success in their search for new employment.17 However, this short-lived experience did have consequences—women had actually been employed in police forces and had demonstrated success. In 1924, the Association pour la répression de la traite des femmes et des enfants (Society for the repression of woman and child slavery) launched a national inquiry asking numerous provincial towns and cities, including Rennes, to contribute information. As requested by the mayor, the commissaire central (chief constable) drafted a detailed and very measured letter in which he expressed his view that there was no fundamental obstacle to the employment of women in police forces and even said there were delicate assignments for which they might prove more efficient than men. He provided rather apt examples: In certain vice cases where underage girls are involved as victims, a woman will much more easily obtain from them those painful but necessary details required by the Penal Code, precisions which will hardly be revealed when the interrogator is a male […]. In sensitive investigations regarding the maltreatment or battery of children, in cases where physical checks are required to prove disrespect of hygiene regulations and for all cases concerned with school attendance, vagrancy, forced begging of children, etc., women’s gentler qualities may certainly prove useful. Besides, police forces are now […] daily required by other state administrations to provide information on single mothers applying for assistance or benefits, on the suitability of some women to act as child-minders, etc. Here again, women would probably do better in gathering appropriate and accurate information.18

Rennes’ police commissioner only quoted two areas where women would be fundamentally unsuitable; given the normative mindsets of the period, these were to be expected: the arrest of violent criminals (including drunks) and the surveillance and repression of prostitution.

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Small Towns: Unlimited Multitasking for Mayors Municipal police forces in smaller towns of the département had even scantier resources than those available in Rennes. Similar staffing problems arose with even more acute consequences in places such as SaintMalo, Fougères or Redon. Of the four to perhaps six officers initially available, mobilisation of two or three was enough to create a situation where any surveillance, repression or rescue operation became truly problematic. In very small localities, gardes-champêtres (game wardens) were the only police force at hand. Most of them could not be mobilised owing to their age and/or state of health, and their efficiency was widely considered, as early on as the 1890s,19 as rather doubtful. However, there was still an extra “police officer” available, a person not initially considered, a person sometimes overlooked in this role, but nevertheless a person that later played a key role in tens of thousands of rural towns and villages—that person was the mayor himself. The revolutionary decree dated 16 and 24 August 1790 had defined the powers and remit of municipal police forces by essentially granting such powers to municipal authorities, namely locally elected political representatives. A mayor was therefore a police officer in his own right. This extraordinary piece of legislation had remained one of the most unchanged in all French public law. With the exception of a few lines, its very wording was thus reproduced and confirmed by later legislation, for example, Art. 97 of the law dated 5 April 1884. However, the so-called “total war” also entailed “total changes” to police responsibilities that mayors and their deputies had never imagined they would need to exert. The mayor of Vitré, Georges Garreau, left us a remarkable account, an almost daily report, of his police activities during 4 years in this period.20 In a town which, before the war, had only six municipal policemen, the mayor soon had to play a fundamental role in the maintenance of law and order: with two officers mobilised there remained only four, plus the commissaire (superintendent) and the mayor himself.21 Mr. Garreau enumerates as follows the missions accomplished22 during the period lasting from 3 August to 21 August 1914, that is, the first 3 weeks after mobilisation23: – August 3. Registration, publication and execution of a prefectural order banning the traffic of all motor vehicles from 6 pm to 6 am except for military and civilian vehicles therein listed in accordance with legislation governing the state of siege;

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– Same day. Registration, publication and execution of a prefectural order mandating closure at 9 pm of all public establishments serving alcoholic beverages; – August 4. Commandeering and seizure of all pneumatic tires to be found in Vitré; – August 6. Municipal bylaw ordering inhabitants to bring to the town hall all items of clothing, equipment or weaponry which quartered soldiers may have left behind them; – Same day. As requested by the prefect, reminder to all inhabitants of obligations pursuant to the recent decree governing the presence of foreign nationals (mandatory registration, residence permit, special authorisation to travel and—specifically for citizens of enemy nations—strict surveillance and prohibition to leave the country). There are currently 13 foreigners staying in Vitré, including one German lady and one Austrian; – August 7. Letter to the prefect regarding the necessity of granting deferment to our bakers being drafted in order to preserve vital supplies of bread. Same-day request to the prefect to allow Dr. Rossignol to remain in Vitré as a military surgeon since his departure would create a dramatic sanitary situation for the town; this was granted and the doctor was appointed as director of the temporary hospital; – Same day. Mayoral proclamation to ask all tradesmen not to raise the prices of foodstuffs; – August 8. Invitation to all non-mobilised men, women and children able to work and provide help with agricultural labors to register at the town hall as soon as possible. Same-day invitation to the families of mobilised men to hand in their applications for the daily support allowance (1.25 francs per day with a 0.50 francs bonus for each child under 16). As of September 10, some 255 applications were received at town hall; – August 9. Information given to inhabitants that our département’s civilian food supplies commission has decided that all tradesmen or factory-owners suspected of undue stockpiling, market cornering activities or exaggerated price rises would be reported to military authorities for trial before a court martial. Same-day information given to fellow citizens that the general in command of the 10th military region has ordered closure at 5 pm of all public establishments serving alcoholic beverages, except for those also “regularly” serving food which may remain open until 9 pm;

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– August 10. Instruction to our commissaire (superintendent) to report all vagrants travelling in caravans as soon as possible. As instructed by the prefect, same-day commandeering and seizure of all rubber bands and bicycle tires with inner tubes. Same-day information that three cafés would be commandeered for a fortnight (exclusively open to servicemen outside normal opening hours). Report to the prefect about suspicious differences between the market price of veal and retail prices at a number of butchers (though those tradesmen have now agreed to lower their prices as of August 11). Report to both our commissaire and the local military commander that revolting piles of refuse have been noticed at several places, including the railway station; – August 15. Publication of a prefectural notice warning farmers against the activities of speculators currently scouring the countryside to buy cattle with a view to forcing a rise in the market price; – August 16. Letter to the gas company supplying the town to urge them to take necessary measures to remedy near-permanent interruption of local supply; – August 17. Warning letter to hospital directors and the deputy-prefect as to fears of possible epidemics if contagious patients currently being treated are not evacuated to a special facility; – August 20. Request to the local military commander to order permanent surveillance (including at night) of the two reservoirs of drink water supplying the town. This was granted. Same-day request to the local military commander to vacate before September 1 the premises of the nursery school and girls’ school in order to allow for normal classes to return (both schools were occupied by military authorities in the early days of the mobilisation but in contravention of previous ministerial circulars). Same-day invitation to the director of the supplementary hospital to proceed with a proper inventory of all items seized in the premises now commandeered to serve as temporary hospitals. Same-day request to the prefect insisting on the necessity to grant deferment to Mr. Robinet whose presence as director of the local gasworks is in the interest of the local economy and local population; – August 21. Information given to the deputy-prefect regarding the closure of several public or private building projects and requesting his support for the opening of municipal works (though proposed daily wages of 1.25 francs might be too low).

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This deluge reflects the similar experience of mayors in countless small cities and towns where such business was sometimes made difficult by tense relations with military authorities in charge of the state of siege. Mr. Garreau’s own opinion was that mayors had become, in the hands of central power, “the most active tools of our National Defence”.24 This statement is only partially exaggerated. The war did indeed transform the role of mayors, particularly in small cities and towns. Functions related to town planning, economic development, local prestige and local politics became secondary issues, superseded by the maintenance of law and order in its broadest understanding, that is, “policing” as it used to be understood in the eighteenth century by Nicolas Delamare.25

Police Work Goes on—For War Purposes Georges Carreau’s testimony already describes ordinary police work adapted to times of war in nearly all practical respects. Yet the war also brought more fundamental changes, which we will briefly examine here, to the overall purpose of police forces. Four types of personnel were almost entirely converted to suit war requirements and the traditional peacetime functions of the profession became only insignificant niches in this overall activity. Gendarmes were first converted. Their wartime assignments and affectations are well known in connection with military police duties, however, the whole corps was not transferred en masse to army areas. Other war-related purposes, such as hunting down draft dodgers, containing mutineers and controlling soldiers on leave, required their presence elsewhere as well. A number of indications seem to show that about half of all gendarmes already enrolled in 1914 remained at their pre-war stations. The commissaires spéciaux (special superintendents) were next to be oriented towards war purposes. Those predecessors of the Renseignements Généraux (Central Directorate of General Intelligence, France’s best-known “spooks”) had been created by a decree dated 22 February 1855 and were originally intended to perform the surveillance of railway lines. However, their assignments had been continually extended ever since that date. Among documents preserved for posterity, the commissaire spécial stationed in Rennes left us notes systematically listing the subjects of his reports sent between April and November 1916.26 Most cases involved are surveillance missions targeting

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individuals defined as “suspicious”, sometimes with aggravating circumstances, such as being a recent newcomer to Rennes, having lived abroad or even simply being able to speak English or German. The commissaires spéciaux kept on with their usual duties, collecting and analysing information, rumours, anonymous letters, but those tasks were now almost entirely related to the war. A particular focus of attention was the very important arsenal located in La Courrouze but all other preoccupations were just as logically connected to the war: refugees, displaced families and prisoners of war. The 13th Mobile Brigade represents another good example.27 It represents one of the most recently created (1911)28 among the “Tiger Brigades” set up by Clemenceau in 1907, having gone down in history bearing his popular nickname. Its personnel were limited to a commissaire divisionnaire (chief superintendent), 3 commissaires (superintendents) and some 15 inspectors. Most of them remained stationed in Rennes where, even before the war, a considerable number of sabotage operations and attempts against military assets had taken place: out of 60 cases investigated by the brigade between November 1911 and February 1912, 20 were acts of sabotage, including 18 attacks against railway lines.29 In 1915,30 out of 100 cases occurring from January to September, 6 were espionage cases (including a very serious case involving a clandestine radio transmitter in Saint-Nazaire), 8 were desertions and 6 were about defeatist propaganda; there were also many investigations targeting suspected illegal trading with the enemy (including the February–December 1915 case involving Father Trochu, a priest and one of the founders of L’Ouest-Eclair, a most influential local newspaper), corruption scandals (including some cases involving members of the food supplies commissions) and disgraceful affairs proving a lack of patriotism, such as the case of Count de Rougé, the Mayor of Tréméven, who, fearing the draft, signed bogus certificates claiming he was a father to 6 children! Another case was that of a local magistrate in Vitré who tried to get an exemption for his son and then slandered the officer who refused his offer of a bribe. In total, 75% (90% if one includes thefts of imported wheat) of cases were related to the war at large. For mobile brigades too, police work went on—again firmly focused on the war. This focus even became obsessive for some—a special mention must be made of censorship services31 whose zeal went far beyond the protection of sensitive military information and involved the invention and use of techniques later imitated by many totalitarian regimes.

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In summary, police work did go on as usual in times of war. Even with reduced numbers of staff, police forces continued performing their peacetime assignments. All members of society away from the front— men or women, young or old, unionised revolutionary militants or rightwing sympathizers of the Action Française—were deeply affected by this war of a completely new kind. Police authorities and services had to adapt and reshape to completely different requirements from the standard rules of law and order.

Notes









1. See for instance Benoît Majerus, Occupations et logiques policières. La police bruxelloise en 1914–1918 et 1940–1945, Bruxelles: Académie Royale de Belgique, 2008. 2. See in particular André Bach, Justice militaire 1915–1916, Paris: Éditions Vendémiaire, 2013. This book, among other similar works, illustrates the essential problem of maintaining discipline among people whose lives are at risk daily. 3. For such issues, see Marie-Thérèse Vogel, La Police des villes entre local et national. L’administration des polices urbaines sous la Troisième République, PhD (Grenoble II University), 1993; Jean-François Tanguy, Le maintien de l’ordre public en Ille-et-Vilaine de 1870 à 1914, PhD (Rennes II University), 1986; Jean-Marc Berlière, Le monde des polices en France, XIXe–XXe siècles, Bruxelles: Complexe, 1996. 4. Cf. Archives Municipales de Rennes [hereinafter AMR], ref. I 12, Exchange of notes during 1919 between the mayor of Rennes and the commissariat central (municipal police commission) regarding matters related to the war and mobilisation/demobilisation procedures. 5. The extensive collection of such reports preserved in Rennes dates back to 1871, forming a rather complete collection and, as demonstrated in my PhD, a major source for social history. For this precise period, see Archives départementales d’Ille-et-Vilaine [hereinafter ADIV], ref. 4 M 55. 6. AMR, ref. I 12, Letter from the Ille-et-Vilaine prefect to the mayor of Rennes, 10 February 1919. 7.  ADIV, ref. 4 M 78, Confidential circular “Interior – Sûreté (criminal investigation division) – to all Prefects – with copy to the Ministry of War”, 17 June 1917. These instructions were then strictly executed. 8. AMR, ref. I 12, Letter from the Ille-et-Vilaine prefect to the mayor of Rennes, 10 February 1919. 9. There were only one or two exceptions at best. 10. AMR, ref. I 12, Copied minutes of municipal council meetings.



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11. Ernest Pérochon, Les Gardiennes, Paris: Librairie Plon, 1924. 12. Ever the since the pioneering work of Patrick Fridenson, Jean-Jacques Becker, and Serge Berstein, 1914–1918, L’autre front, Paris: Éditions ouvrières, 1977, studies on the subject have multiplied. See among others Evelyne Morin-Rotureau (ed.), 1914–1918: combats de femmes. Les femmes, pilier de l’effort de guerre, Paris: Autrement/Ministère de la Défense, 2004; Chantal Antier-Renaud, Les femmes dans la Grande Guerre, Saint-Cloud: 14–18 Éditions, 2011; Franck and Michèle Jouve, La vraie histoire des femmes de 14–18, Paris: Éditions Chronique, 2013; Evelyne Morin-Rotureau (ed.), Françaises en guerre: 1914–1918, Paris: Autrement, 2013; Françoise Thébaud, Les femmes au temps de la guerre de 14, Paris: Payot & Rivages, 2013; Martine Gasquet Les oubliées de la victoire: les femmes dans la guerre de 1914, Nice: Gilletta, 2015. 13.  The most extensive exploration of this subject remains Geneviève Pruvost’s De la ‘sergote’ à la femme flic: une autre histoire de l’institution policière, 1935–2005, Paris: La Découverte, 2008. 14. Secretaries were among personnel with municipal police status but must not be confused with deputy superintendents/captains, sometimes also known as “secretaries”. 15. AMR, ref. I 12. 16. AMR, ref. I 12, Letter from the commissaire central (police commissioner) to the mayor of Rennes, 21 November 1918. 17.  Out of necessity, Mme Chevalier and Mme Pinault were temporarily exempted from this measure—but only for a few weeks. 18. AMR, ref. I 12, Letter from the commissaire central (police commissioner) to the mayor of Rennes, 12 September 1924. 19. See Fabien Gaveau, L’ordre aux champs: histoire des gardes-champêtres en France de la Révolution française à la Troisième République. Pour une autre histoire de l’État, PhD (University of Burgundy), 2005. 20. Georges Garreau, La vie d’une commune pendant la guerre (Vitré, 1914– 1918), Rennes: Imprimerie de l’Ouest-Journal, 1932. 21. Nearly all commissaires (police superintendents) remained in place, except for those mobilised with a special army posting. 22. Listed here are only activities directly related to a broad understanding of “municipal policing” as defined by the 1790 decree and the 1884 law. 23. Ibid., p. 26 sq. 24. G. Garreau, La vie d’une commune, p. 127. 25. Nicolas Delamare, Traité de la police, Paris: J. et P. Cot, 1705–1710, 2 Vols. This understanding of policing was still in use in the nineteenth century, as demonstrated in the massive 4-volume treatise of Louis Courcelle, Répertoire de Police administrative et judiciaire, Paris-Nancy: Berger-Levrault, 1896.

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26. ADIV, ref. 4 M 77. 27. Regional mobile brigades were created in 1907–1908 in order to provide the Sûreté Générale (the Ministry of the Interior’s criminal investigation division) with an active network of investigative and repressive branches. Initially 12, then 15 after 1911, their activities were supposed to be limited to judicial police work. However, even before the war their assignments were soon widely extended beyond this framework, for instance with the specific surveillance of vagrants or individuals suspected of espionage. 28. On this subject, see Ronan Mattheyses, La criminalité à travers les dossiers de la 13e brigade mobile de Rennes (1911–1920), MA thesis (Rennes II University), 2001. 29. ADIV, ref. 4 M 521. 30. ADIV, ref. 4 M 524, 525. 31.  See Olivier Forcade, La censure en France pendant la Grande Guerre, Paris: Fayard, 2016. This includes a very interesting descriptive list of seized pamphlets (ADIV, ref. 4 M 78).

CHAPTER 9

The Complex Policing System of Oldenburg, a Middle German State Far Away from the War? Gerhard Wiechmann and Guillaume Payen

With 6500 square kilometres and approximately 500,000 inhabitants, the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg was a middle state in a federal empire where the powers of police were devolved to state and municipal forces. Consequently a diversity in strength existed: while the Königliche Schutzmannschaft Berlin (Royal Berlin Constabulary) was composed of 7000 Schutzmänner (constables), the small principality of SchaumburgLippe had only 9 gendarmes.1 For this reason, in addition to the fact that the German Confederation from 1815 to 1866 consisted of 37 principalities and 4 city republics, all of which had their own approaches to law enforcement, there has not to date been a single overarching consideration of the history of the German police force.2

G. Wiechmann (*)  Carl Von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany G. Payen  Centre d’histoire du XIXe siècle (EA 3550)/Department of History, Sorbonne University, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_9

121

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The Grand Duchy of Oldenburg had a classical hybrid policing system constituted of civil municipal and state police forces with military status modelled according to the French Gendarmerie. United by a common sovereign, its composite territory embraced the Duchy of Oldenburg (today part of Lower Saxony) and the principalities of Lübeck (today part of Schleswig-Holstein, not to be confused with the nearby Hanseatic City of Lübeck) and Birkenfeld (today part of RhinelandPalatinate and Saarland), each having its own government. This explains why the gendarmes of Lübeck were part of the Grand Ducal Gendarmerie Corps, while the 12 gendarmes of Birkenfeld remained totally autonomous and were placed directly under the authority of local government.3 The present study will deal mainly with the Duchy of Oldenburg as it was the principal element of the Grand Duchy. The Duchy of Oldenburg was very agrarian and contained only three cities: its capital city, named Oldenburg; the industrial town of Delmenhorst; and Rüstringen, twin town of the Prussian naval base of Wilhelmshaven. In 1914 the Oldenburg City police counted around 50 constables including 5 night watchmen for the night security service.4 Small towns had communal police forces with one or two Polizeidienern (police servants) with administrative functions only; in these municipalities detective work was the task of the Gendarmerie, which was by far the most important law enforcement agency in the Grand Duchy. With its entry in 1867 into the North German League and the convention regulating the military relationship of member states, the Grand Duchy abolished its armed forces, which became Prussian units5; the Grand Duke received the status of a Prussian general with the right to use Prussian troops stationed in the Duchy in case, for example, of political unrest.6 To keep control over state police, the LandDragoner (state dragoons) Corps, founded in 1817, was transformed into the Oldenburg Grand Ducal Gendarmerie corps (Großherzoglich Oldenburgisches Gendarmeriekorps), a military unit placed under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior,7 like the gendarmeries in Baden, Hesse, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Brunswick, Waldeck or SchaumburgLippe.8 Since 1885, the commander had always been an active or retired officer of the local Oldenburg 91st Infantry Regiment (Oldenburgisches Infanterie-Regiments Nr. 91, abbreviated to OIR 91).9 In 1914, commanded by retired Colonel Rudolf Kellner (1850–1927),10 the corps had 125 members, all of whom were former non-commissioned officers (NCOs) from the Prussian Army or Imperial Navy, and mostly citizens of

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the Duchy.11 The corps was militarily organised, but its gendarmes were not soldiers.12 In the daily peacetime routine the military character of the corps was unimportant. The gendarmes were scattered over 58 posts in 13 districts.13 At this time, only 5 were mounted, 14 served in the principality of Lübeck and 5 posts were vacant14; from 1897 onwards, horses began to be replaced by bicycles.15 Situated on the coast of the North Sea, the Duchy of Oldenburg was remote from the front line, but not from the war. Many mobilised men went far away to the front, but conversely prisoners of war were held, spies and saboteurs feared and effects of the severe food restrictions in Germany felt. In addition, since the region was an agrarian state, that benefited from a large surplus of milk products, eggs and meat, there were certain black market activities, farm thefts and burglaries. As such, police forces had to adapt to this situation with fewer men and learn to cooperate with the Prussian Army and Imperial Navy, which further complicated Oldenburg’s policing system, until finally at the end of the war it was confronted with defeat, revolution and the treaty of Versailles.

Policing Oldenburg at War In the first two weeks of August the city of Oldenburg transformed into a large army camp and was filled with approximately 11,000 volunteers, reservists and Landwehr16 and Landsturm17 members, who were housed mostly in private quarters.18 The Gendarmerie and city constables were supported at this time, as well as later on, by Landsturm companies. In the early days so-called Spionitis (a play on words mixing two terms meaning “espionage” and “sickness”) created bizarre situations; police forces arrested dozens of people suspected of being spies and saboteurs, however, all convicts had to be released immediately upon further consideration of the facts. As early as 5 August the Ministry of the Interior realised that the countless controls created more trouble than they prevented; during one inspection some of its officials noticed that there was a lack of any specific system and stated that they should be reformed and reduced.19 Upon the outbreak of war, no gendarmes were mobilised for front line service because of the small strength of the corps (volunteering was not allowed), in contrast to the nearly 12.5% of the Prussian gendarmes who were transferred to the Feldgendarmerie to perform military police duties.20 In sharp contrast to the Gendarmerie, half the personnel

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of the Oldenburg City police were drawn into army service with three agents subsequently killed in combat; auxiliary watchmen were hired as replacements, mostly local craftsmen who were unfit for military duty.21 By 1916 the numbers of communal police officers were significantly reduced: in Oldenburg City there were 15 constables, 6 in Delmenhorst and in Rüstringen there were 12.22 As a consequence the police in Oldenburg City were one third of what they had been before the war23—even at that time this number was considered too few for the professional policing of a modern city.24 Wartime in Germany meant severe food shortages for the entire population, in particular in cities. The Royal Navy’s blockade of the German coast, which began at the outbreak of war, was a very powerful economic weapon against Germany, since it imported one quarter of its food supplies in 1914.25 The situation was exacerbated by the necessities of war: a significant part of the labourers, including farmers, had joined the army, only to be partly replaced by women and the forced labour of prisoners of war. At the same time military needs had increased drastically: after the Battle of the Marne (6–10 September 1914), which required more munitions than the entire war against France in 1870–1871, the German army had exhausted all its stockpiles.26 Consequently, it became entirely reliant on what could be produced within German territory. Rationing was introduced gradually from January 1915 onwards (starting with bread27) in order to manage food resources, which tended to decrease as time passed. Under these circumstances, the black market soon became a massive phenomenon, driven in part by the fact that rations, set by military authorities, did not allow people to eat sufficiently well: as publisher Helmut von Gerlach stated with some exaggeration, “the black market has become the normal form of traffic in goods”28; Roger Chickering estimates more realistically that the “Germans were purchasing fully one third of all food on the black market by war’s end”.29 Repressing the black market was one of the main duties of police forces in Oldenburg, since many other food buyers from outside the Duchy often visited, most commonly from the much more urbanised Westphalia, situated close to its southern border. Although evidence concerning the wartime activity of the Delmenhorst police is very scarce, it appears it mainly dealt with repression of this illegal black market trading: “From the Delmenhorst constabulary one can say, that it intervened softly in small crimes, but reacted harshly to black market

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activities. Large black market deals like in Oldenburg or Wilhelmshaven did not happen”.30 As Delmenhorst was an industrial town, it was populated with many poor workers who suffered greatly from the rise in food prices: one can assume that the repression of the black market was therefore above all a political necessity, destined to decrease local discontent by demonstrating action by the authorities against war profiteers. The Grand Ducal Gendarmerie corps also fought against the black market, in particular by controlling mail packages and the luggage of railway passengers—something they did with leniency; the public, be it passengers, spectators or railway personnel, sharply criticised railway searches—in September 1918 the military government in Hanover asked the Oldenburg government to instruct gendarmes not to pursue railway passengers who carried only food for their own needs because of the tense atmosphere that existed within the population.31 Gendarmerie statistics provide us with useful data concerning crime, but it is unclear to what extent they cover the three cities of Oldenburg, Rüstringen and Delmenhorst. All in all, it seems that in 1914/1915 police work was not affected too much by the war. Statistics show some variations in cases of theft. Yet it is noticeable that there were only two murder charges in 1914, but seven in the first half of 1916 (Table 9.1). There were no strong variations in crime in June/July 1916, but in August charges of theft rose to 157.32 Most of the crimes were probably so-called Felddiebstähle, i.e. farm thefts, related to the beginning

Table 9.1  Gendarmerie statistics concerning crime in Oldenburg Duchy (1914–1916)

1914 1915 1916 January February March April May aJahres-Bericht

Murders

Robberies

Thefts

2 5

3 28

972a 1146b

2 1 1 2 1

0 0 1 0 0

136 108 93 63 108c

vom Großherzoglichen Gendarmerie-Korps für das Jahr 1914; NLA OL 204 Nr. 266 Jahresbericht 1915; NLA OL 204 Nr. 151 cGendarmerie-Kommando. Monatsberichte 1916; NLA OL 204 Nr. 152 bGendarmerie-Kommando.

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of the harvest season and partly caused by the very difficult food situation prevailing in Germany. It is unclear why the number of murder charges went up from a total of five in 1915 to seven in the first five months of 1916, and why on the contrary charges for robbery fell dramatically from 28 in 1915 to just one in the first half of 1916. However, in December 1916 the Ministry of the Interior observed a very insecure situation, especially in the countryside, caused by numerous burglaries.33 One can assume that most of the burglars were looking for food: the winter of 1916/1917, known as the “turnip winter” (Steckrübenwinter), witnessed a terrible shortage of meat and potatoes, and so turnips, which were normally fed to animals, were frequently consumed by humans in insipid soups. In this context, the houses and farms of an agricultural country like the Duchy were considered to be filled with all the wealth that truly counted, that is, real food. Preoccupied with the prevention of black market activities, the Gendarmerie, the only detective force existing at the time, was not able to handle the situation or prevent crime by forced patrolling. Exactly one year later, in December 1917, the Ministry reported a “terrible increase” of thefts and asked for a forced security service from the Gendarmerie even if that meant administrative functions being neglected.34 In the last two months of war, October and November 1918, no murder charges were recorded; there were 211 charges of theft in October and 175 in November, not that many more than in the second half of 1916 (what is unclear is the number of robberies).35 The German Army took many prisoners of war (POWs): the total count for the entire war ranges from seven to nine million captives;36 considerable numbers were interned in Germany.37 Guarding them was the task of the Landsturm; with that purpose in mind, in the greater city of Oldenburg the IV. Landsturm-Infanterie-Ersatz-Bataillon was in charge, one company staying in the city itself.38 The Gendarmerie was responsible for the pursuit of escaped POWs. This was not an easy task since most POWs worked outside of their camps, completing forced labour (this was the case for 90% of the POWs in Germany in August 1916),39 something that made escape much easier. Only one request for search and seizure was recorded (in June 1916), made surprisingly enough by Oldenburg City police and not the military, when 20 Russian40 NCOs escaped from a camp near Bremen—10 were arrested immediately, the others fled by boat over the Weser River into Oldenburg territory.41

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The war witnessed increasing dissatisfaction among the German population. The number of strikes grew: there were 137 in 1915 and 561 in 1917; accordingly, the number of people striking increased from 14,000 in 1915 to 670,000 in 1917. After the “turnip winter” of 1916/1917, consumers protested more and more against shortages.42 All these conflicts were local but could have easily escalated. In Oldenburg, at the end of February 1917, as the winter was cold and coal43 was lacking in the industrial city of Delmenhorst,44 the authorities feared riots. Eight gendarmes were prepared to intervene, but Commander Kellner reminded them to be extremely careful and under no circumstances to provoke citizens in such a critical situation.45 Again, in April 1917 some gendarmes and auxiliary gendarmes were sent to reinforce local security forces. The Gendarmerie corps too suffered from shortages caused by the war. As early as June 1915 the supply of the corps with its traditional uniforms was prevented by a total and perdurable lack of necessary greenish-grey Litewkas46; so command asked the government that army tailor Spangemacher be allowed to use the new Feldgrau (“field-grey”) fabric for the army, which was authorised immediately by the Ministry of the Interior.47 In the winter of 1915/1916 oat rations for Gendarmerie horses were cut to 2.75 kg per day—prices were so high that the yearly costs per horse had increased to 1000 marks; as a consequence of this command considered abolishing the use of more horses.48 In 1918 only five horses were in service, as against eight in 1914. In the beginning of autumn 1917 measures to reduce the use of lighting were taken, even in the central office of the Gendarmerie barracks in the city of Oldenburg its use was reduced to a minimum.49 At the end of September 1918 the soles of boots worn by gendarmes in the principality of Lübeck were so worn out that command in Oldenburg was forced to ask for help from the IX. Army Corps in Altona, finding it impossible to get new ones in the principality itself; from 1917 to 1919 gendarmes in the Duchy received boots and soles from the local OIR 91.50 Despite the devastating circumstances at both the front and home front in spring 1918, the Oldenburg government organised a centenary for the Gendarmerie Corps. The celebration was on 2 April 1918, representing the 50th service jubilee of Commander Kellner. It was “limited” in extent as a result of the circumstances of war, but “dignified and significant.” Some 100 gendarmes enjoyed the jubilee in the presence of Grand Duke Friedrich August, the ministers, the mayor of the city of Oldenburg and many high-ranking military and civil officials. As

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a gift to the gendarmes Friedrich August allowed them to wear his initials (“F.A.”) with a crown on their shoulder straps; Kellner himself was promoted to the title and character of an Oldenburg major general—the first since 1857—and promised in return unlimited loyalty to the Grand Duke. Several gendarmes and the primary school teacher Stolle, who had taught for years the enlisted gendarmes, received medals of honour. According to the press, the centenary had shown that the “guardians of public safety” possessed a high reputation across the whole state.51

Created During the War: Naval and Auxiliary Gendarmes From 1916 on, the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg was policed by two new military types of policemen: naval and auxiliary gendarmes. The Fortress Gendarmerie of Wilhelmshaven (Festungsgendarmerie Wilhelmshaven, abbreviated to F.G.), a nearly unknown military police formation, was indeed also active in the territory of Oldenburg; it existed from the end of 1916 until July 1919 and was founded by the fortress commander to prevent abuse from sailors towards citizens, but its official task was counter-intelligence.52 More importantly, from 1916 onwards the Oldenburg Gendarmerie corps was strengthened by so-called security NCOs (Sicherheitsunteroffiziere, abbreviated to S.U.), later designated as auxiliary gendarmes (Hilfsgendarmen), dispatched from the Prussian X. Army Corps Hanover (the auxiliaries were normally NCOs from reserve or Landwehr regiments). On 12 November 1916 the X. Army Corps Hanover announced to the Oldenburg government the arrival of auxiliary gendarmes as a result of fears linked to the security of war supplies.53 The dispatch was published a few days later and relied on paragraph 4 of the law about the state of siege of 4 June 1851.54 The basic manual for the service of the S.U. was the seven-page Dienstanweisung für die Sicherheits-Unteroffiziere des stellvertretenden Generalkommandos X. Armeekorps (Hannover 25 November 1916). In September 1917 the S.U. received a new, now 17-page manual, which also included army detectives (Heereskriminalbeamte): Dienstanweisung für die Hilfsgendarmen und Heereskriminalbeamten des stellv. Gen.-Kdos. X. A. K. (Hannover 1. September 1917).55 The new manual provided significantly more detail than the previous version, particularly about the use of weapons: one can suppose that, since auxiliary gendarmes were soldiers, and as such trained to kill, they needed to be refrained from using their weapons too hastily on the home front.

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The most important task for these NCOs assigned to security was the prevention of farm thefts and sabotage; nevertheless, although they were auxiliary gendarmes, their coordination with the Gendarmerie was not good: as late as the end of September 1917 Commander Kellner complained to the government that he did not know to whom they were responsible—the districts and their senior civil servants or the Gendarmerie command in Oldenburg.56 Indeed, the districts could request security NCOs directly from the X. Army Corps Hanover without knowledge of the Oldenburg government, so that during the war the Gendarmerie never knew numbers or locations of auxiliaries serving in the Duchy. This was probably a consequence of the civil and local authorities on which the Gendarmerie depended: since they were not a part of the Prussian Army, there was no obvious military chain of command and therefore the auxiliary gendarmes dispatched in the Duchy were not ex officio submitted to the Gendarmerie commander. In October 1917 Commander Kellner criticised sharply the dispatch of 22 security NCOs and auxiliary gendarmes to the district of Cloppenburg, because the Gendarmerie and not the X. Army Corps had to pay each of them an extra 30 marks per month.57 Kellner had criticised the overwhelming dispatch of the auxiliaries in this district. Only 7 were requested but 1458 arrived, and they were even afforded the same rights as full gendarmes, although they had only to guard POWs and were not expected to perform normal police services. In addition, at the time, POWs had never been considered a threat to the population of the district of Cloppenburg.59 Another sharp criticism of the S.U. in Cloppenburg came from the district itself (supported by regional officials and politicians). This resulted in a very controversial debate at the Oldenburg Landtag (parliament).60 MP Feigel, who personally felt he had been treated like a heavy criminal, cited a newspaper notice saying that 21 of the 43 auxiliaries stationed in the Duchy, were in Cloppenburg. Opponents blamed the government, to which they attributed the excessive zeal of security NCOs, something particularly detrimental in the tense climate caused by ongoing food shortages. Minister Scheer responded stating that the auxiliary gendarmes were not an Oldenburg institution but a military one and that the X. Army Corps thought they were useful. Member Enneking said there had been a “great scandal” in Cloppenburg: a citizen who had caught a burglar handed him over to two hussars who served as auxiliaries; they put a rope around the burglar’s neck and led him behind their horses.

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However, at the first opportunity the captive escaped the rope and disappeared into the woods. Enneking argued that the hussars were young men and should serve on the front line, but Scheer repeated that the country was in a state of war, which meant that the executive had passed to the military, and he pointed out moreover the dangers of arson and cattle poisoning. At that moment, the influential Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) MP Paul Hug entered the debate: in his opinion the auxiliaries were important for fighting the black market, which tended to make producers and traders “incredibly rich”; but they could sometimes be too prone to confiscating goods in even minor incidents: I have never heard that about our old, proven gendarmes. Experience teaches me that the ones who know the circumstances can handle this delicate question with a lot more skill and tact.61

Minister Scheer answered that the first auxiliaries had been trained in the city of Oldenburg, something that would now be impossible; the black market had expanded so rapidly that there was not enough food even for the local population. He had himself seen on railway stations in the district of Vechta between 700 and 800 people carrying packed sacks on their way back to Westphalia. Drastic measures had to be taken to stop this illegal and harmful trade.62

Policing Defeated Germany The social and political situation in Oldenburg had remained relatively stable despite the turmoil of war; then the revolution came. After a first revolt in Wilhelmshaven (the location of the naval base near Oldenburg) when, during the night of 29–30 October 1918, sailors had refused to go to sea against the British fleet for honour only as the war had already been lost, the revolution continued in Kiel on 3 November with mutineers joined by representatives of workers. With the slogan “Peace and Bread”, the mutiny became a revolution and spread. On 8 November, armed sailors from Wilhelmshaven appeared in Oldenburg and forced the deposition of the Grand Duke. The so-called revolution consisted in an almost bloodless putsch, which created two “governments”: the bourgeois Direktorium (“directory”, the name of the provisional republican government), formed by former ministers, social democrats and liberals, which declared the Grand Duchy a Free State,

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and an extreme left-wing revolutionary “council” in Wilhelmshaven, which proclaimed the whole of north-western Germany a socialist republic (Sozialistische Republik Oldenburg-Ostfriesland). Even the Direktorium had to cooperate with the local councils of workers and soldiers in the centre and north of the Free State, since they had declared themselves responsible for public security: so the Gendarmerie and police forces in Oldenburg had to sometimes deal with two “governments”. This interim period is well characterised by an order of the Direktorium to Gendarmerie command from December 1918: it seemed to be necessary to motivate the gendarmes to work closely with soldier councils to keep public order, especially at night. In the opinion of the Direktorium, the gendarmes knew best how to handle security services, especially the surveillance of special districts or places,63 and how to enforce law strictly without unnecessary harshness.64 The diarchy ended with a communist putsch on 27 January 1919 in Wilhelmshaven, stopped by naval troops loyal to the provisional social democratic government in Berlin. Aside from this turbulence, both the Gendarmerie and the communal police of the city of Oldenburg remained completely untouched by revolutionary developments. Even their chiefs, like Major General Kellner, stayed in office. There is no doubt that the provisional Direktorium and then, after June 1919, the republican government, had not the slightest intention to alter the old Grand Ducal Corps, besides the abolition of the Grand Ducal coat of arms from the Pickelhaube, the spiked helmet worn by German soldiers and policemen since the nineteenth century. Contrary to the situation in Prussia, where the Gendarmerie was renamed Landjäger and placed under the authority of the Ministry of the Interior in late 1918, this was not necessary in the Free State where, since 1867, the Gendarmerie had been under civil control. This hybrid construction did not prevent the Oldenburg Gendarmerie corps from being forbidden by the treaty of Versailles, which allowed only the Reichswehr (the German Army) to have military status. The Oldenburg Gendarmerie society understood the problem this posed and asked the government in 1926 to transform the gendarmes into civil state officials as they were in the other German Gendarmeries.65 The Landtag responded, stating that the regulation was without practical significance, but that it wished to abolish this military status of the corps “as soon as possible”.66 Even after the Armistice, the support of the army was still required: in December 1918 the districts of Oldenburg and Butjadingen requested

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the further assistance of auxiliaries; a retreat was in their opinion out of question.67 It remained so until spring 1919, when the state of siege ended on 1 April.68 At that time, in what was henceforth the province of Oldenburg, 25 auxiliaries were still serving. Once again, Kellner made it clear that if the districts wanted to keep them they would have to pay for them, not Gendarmerie command.69 Eventually, the Free State itself financed the use of 60 auxiliaries because of growing insecurity within the country.70 Contrary to these other forces, the Fortress Gendarmerie of Wilhelmshaven was considered by Oldenburg authorities, after the revolution, as absolutely ineffective and even a threat to public security—naval gendarmes appeared to be involved in theft. By the summer of 1919 some others in Varel were undertaking house searches without warrants. The senior civil servant of the district of Jever urged the Oldenburg Direktorium to intervene and to dispatch Oldenburg gendarmes. The F.G. was dissolved a few weeks later on 13 July 1919. Oldenburg police forces were confronted with difficult tasks on the home front: watching prisoners of war; managing the presence of soldiers and sailors; and they had to deal with the consequences of the blockade and war economy, that is, the black market, farm thefts and burglaries, as the population suffered from supply shortages (the gendarmes themselves were also directly impacted: uniforms, boots and soles, use of lighting and feed for horses). The organisation of the police service in the Grand Duchy in the First World War shows pars pro toto that the German policing system was not prepared for a lengthy war. Deprived of any centralisation,71 it seems to have hindered effective police work, unlike, for example, in France or Italy with centralised Gendarmeries. Weak even in peacetime, the Oldenburg Gendarmerie was, during wartime, overburdened with duties connected to the control of food, hindering patrols and criminal investigations. Communal police forces were reduced to 50% of their capacity as personnel were drafted into army service. Their replacements consisted of inexperienced personnel, considered unfit for duty. With little experienced in riot control, the Oldenburg Gendarmerie benefited from the relatively calm political and social conditions in the Duchy, contrary, for example, to the industrial parts of Prussia like the Ruhr region; on the other hand, the military government in Hanover and Gendarmerie command in Oldenburg were aware that limits needed to be applied to law enforcement—they were aware of the leniency required when local atmospheres became tense. This was not the approach taken by the

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inexperienced security NCOs. In the end, the Prussian Army and Imperial Navy were the main causes of disorder in the Duchy: whilst the auxiliary and naval gendarmes had made the Oldenburg policing system more complex and less reliable, the naval mutiny and revolution at the nearby naval base of Wilhelmshaven caused the collapse of the Grand Duchy, proving it to be effectively remote from the front-line, but not from the war.

Notes





1.  Dr. jur. Max Weiß, Polizeirat, Die Polizeischule. Ein Lehrbuch und Leitfaden zum Unterrichte an Polizeischulen und in kriminalistischen Unterrichtskursen ferner ein Buch zum Selbstunterrichte für Polizeianwärter und ein Nachschlagebuch für Beamte der Sicherheits-, Kriminal- und Wohlfahrtspolizei, Bd. I, Dresden: Verlag der Polizeischule, 1910, p. 11, online version http://wwww.kukri.de/SchaumburgLippeGendarmerie.pdf (28 February 2019). 2. The only scholarly work published about policing history in nineteenth century Germany is an investigation of the Württemberg Gendarmerie by Walter Wannenwetsch (Das Württembergische Landjägerkorps und die reichsdeutsche Gendarmerie in Württemberg mit einer Rückschau auf die Anfänge der Landespolizei, Stuttgart: Gewerkschaft der Polizei. Landesbezirk Baden-Württemberg, 1986), an archivist who used files from the Stuttgart state archive. The first and second decades of the twentieth century have been published more or less in a dozen German Gendarmerie historical accounts, often displayed as chronologies, related to the centenaries of the corps; one example is Wintermann (see below). One account that remains useful today is Oberst Fritz Beck’s Geschichte des Großherzoglich Hessischen Gendarmeriekorps 1763– 1905, Darmstadt: H. Hohmann, 1905, for which the author used intensely historical sources from the Darmstadt government. Bernd Wirsing’s doctoral thesis, Die Geschichte des Gendarmeriekorps und deren Vorläuferorganisationen in Baden, Württemberg und Bayern, 1750–1850, PhD (University of Konstanz), 1991, has not been published. 3. Stabs-Oberwachtmeister Wintermann, Denkschrift zum hundertjährigen Bestehen des Großherzoglich Oldenburgischen Gendarmerie-Korps 1817–1917, Oldenburg: Littmann, 1918, p. 38; H. Peter Brandt, “Der Landesteil Birkenfeld”, in Albrecht Eckhardt and Heinrich Schmidt (eds.), Geschichte des Landes Oldenburg. Ein Handbuch, 3rd Edition, Oldenburg: Holzberg, 1988, pp. 591–636; Helmut Lieber, Geschichte der Polizei des Birkenfelder Landes. Vom Fürstenthum zum Landkreis, Birkenfeld: KVHS Birkenfeld, 1987.

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4.  Heinrich Lankenau (ed.), Oldenburgisches Polizeihandbuch, Oldenburg: Littmann, 1929, p. 154 and Adressbuch für Oldenburg 1914, Schulzesche: Hofbuchhandlung, p. 14. 5. Wintermann, Denkschrift zum hundertjährigen Bestehen des Großherzoglich Oldenburgischen Gendarmerie-Korps, p. 28. 6. Wilhelm Schücking, Das Staatsrecht des Großherzogtums Oldenburg, Tübingen Mohr, 1911, pp. 262–263. 7. The term Gendarmerie for state police forces was used in Prussia and most of the German confederate states since the second decade of the nineteenth century. The Prussian Gendarmerie from 1812 onwards was modelled after the French Gendarmerie and was renamed Landjäger (State Chasseurs) after the November Revolution of 1918 (see Landjägermajor Werner Blankenstein, Die preußische Landjägerei im Wandel der Zeiten, Erfurt: self-published, 1931, p. 7). The Oldenburg state dragoon corps founded in 1817, modelled after the state dragoons of the Kingdom of Hanover, introduced in 1815, avoided the term Gendarmerie, possibly because the Duchy was annexed by France in 1811 and parted in two until 1813 (the Département des Bouches du Weser, with Bremen as its capital city and the Département de l’Ems supérieur, with its capital Osnabrück). After the French had dissolved the Ducal Police dragoon corps, founded in 1786, and posted the 34th legion of the Gendarmerie impériale in Bremen, it seems that, after the fall of Napoleon, the term Gendarmerie was “burned”. See Friedrich-Wilhelm Schaer and Albrecht Eckhardt, “Herzogtum und Großherzogtum Oldenburg im Zeitalter des aufgeklärten Absolutismus (1773–1847)”, in Albrecht Eckhardt and Heinrich Schmidt (eds.), Geschichte des Landes Oldenburg. Ein Handbuch, Oldenburg: Holzberg, 1987, pp. 271–331, esp. p. 287; Heinrich Lankenau, Das Oldenburgische Landdragonerkorps (1817–1867), Oldenburg: Stalling, 1928, p. 13. For the old police dragoon corps, one of the first German state police forces, see Heinrich Lankenau, “Das Polizeidragonerkorps des Herzogtums Oldenburg (1786–1811). Die Geschichte des ältesten Verbandes der oldenburgischen Polizei”, Jahrbuch des Vereins für Altertumskunde und Landesgeschichte, Vol. 30, No. 49, 1926, pp. 5–128, online version www.lb-oldenburg.de/pdf_oldenburger_jahrbuch/30_1926.pdf (28 February 2019). 8.  Edgar Graf von Matuschka, “Organisationsgeschichte des Heeres 1890–1918”, in Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (ed.), Deutsche Militärgeschichte in sechs Bänden 1648–1939, Vol. III, Herrsching: Pawlak, 1983, pp. 157–311, esp. p. 189. 9. Wintermann, Denkschrift zum hundertjährigen Bestehen des Großherzoglich Oldenburgischen Gendarmerie-Korps, p. 30.

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10.  Kellner entered the Oldenburg 91st Infantry Regiment (OIR 91) on 1 April 1868. He participated in the French–German War and made a career as an officer in the Prussian Army. From 1884 to 1889 he served as a teacher at the Royal Military Academy of Potsdam. In 1901 he retired as colonel with the uniform of the OIR 91 (see “Das hundertjährige Bestehen des Groß. Oldenb. Gendarmerie-Korps”, in Nachrichten für Stadt und Land [Oldenburg] from 3 April 1918, p. 5 and “Von unseren Toten”, in Der Oldenburgische Hauskalender, No. 103, 1929, p. 52). 11.  Not untypical is the curriculum vitae of gendarme Johann Gerhard Wempe (1868–1955). The son of a carpenter, he attended primary school from 1875 to 1883. After an apprenticeship as a baker he entered the OIR 91 in 1889. He joined the Gendarmerie in 1896 and retired in 1934 as Gendarmerie-Oberkommissar (data by GendarmerieOberkommissar a. D. Johann Gerhard Wempe, unpublished family manuscript, with permission of grandaughter Erika Mitwer, born Wempe, Oldenburg). 12.  Dienstvorschrift für das Großherzoglich Oldenburgische Gendarmerie-Korps, Oldenburg, 1911, p. 1. 13. Wintermann, Denkschrift zum hundertjährigen Bestehen des Großherzoglich Oldenburgischen Gendarmerie-Korps, p. 74 and Anlage 5, “Mannschaftsbestand und Stationierung Ende 1917”, pp. 65–68 and 82–84. 14. Wintermann, Denkschrift zum hundertjährigen Bestehen des Großherzoglich Oldenburgischen Gendarmerie-Korps, p. 69. The Gendarmerie of Lübeck was integrated into the corps on 1 January 1904 and received at the same time its military status, ibid., p. 38. 15. Ibid., p. 37. 16. Landwehr: elderly army reservists. 17.  Landsturm: a kind of militia composed mostly of elderly reserve members or men with no prior service. 18.  Stadt Oldenburg – Stadtarchiv (ed.), Oldenburg 1914–1918. Ein Quellenband zur Alltags-, Sozial-, Militär- und Mentalitätsgeschichte der Stadt Oldenburg im Ersten Weltkrieg, Oldenburg: Isensee, 2014, p. 17. 19. Ibid., p. 22. 20. The Prussian gendarmes were nearly completely re-transferred by summer 1917 because of the growing insecurity at home and, as Blankenstein more or less freely states, the incompetence of the auxiliary gendarmes serving as their substitutes. Werner Blankenstein, Die preußische Landjägerei im Wandel der Zeiten, p. 64.

136  G. WIECHMANN AND G. PAYEN 21.  [Heinrich] Köhnke, “Städtische Polizei Oldenburg i. O.”, Deutsches Polizei-Archiv, No. 73, 1928, H. 19, p. 353; Heinrich Lankenau (ed.), Oldenburgisches Polizeihandbuch, p. 155. 22.  Staatsministerium an Ämter und Städte from 10 March 1916, Verfügungen des Staatsministeriums über Montierungsbestände; Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv Oldenburg [hereinafter NLA OL] 204 Nr. 281. 23. There is no more precise data related to Rüstringen City police; information from the Stadtarchiv Wilhelmshaven dated 21 February 2016. An inquiry to the Stadtarchiv Delmenhorst from 20 February 2016 was unanswered. 24.  Statement of City mayor Dr. Görlitz and City councillor Hüwett to the Ministry of the Interior from 14 October 1924, Ordnungspolizei. Dienstalter, Polizeibeamte; NLA OL 205 Nr. 208. 25. Belinda Davis, “Food and Nutrition (Germany)”, in Encyclopedia 1914– 1918, online version https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/food_and_nutrition_germany (28 February 2019). 26. Roger Chickering, Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914–1918, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 35. 27. Ibid., p. 43. 28. Cited in Belinda Davis, “Food and Nutrition (Germany)”. 29. Roger Chickering, Imperial Germany, p. 45. 30.  “Der Delmenhorster Schutzmannschaft ist nachzusagen, daß sie bei Kleinigkeiten gelinde eingriff, dem Schleichhandel dafür umso schärfer auf die Finger sah. Große Schiebungen wie in Oldenburg und Wilhelmshaven sind bei uns nicht vorgekommen”, quoted in Edgar Grundig, Geschichte der Stadt Delmenhorst von 1848 bis 1945, Delmenhorst 1960 (manuscript), p. 54. 31. Ibid., p. 139. 32. Ibid. 33.  MdI an Ämter und Städte from 2 December 1916, Amt Oldenburg. Gendarmerie und Ordnungspolizei, 1867–1933; NLA OL 230-1 Nr. 97. 34. MdI an Gend.-Kdo. 21 December 1917, Amt Oldenburg. Gendarmerie und Ordnungspolizei, 1867–1933; NLA OL 230-1 Nr. 97. 35.  Monatsberichte vom Gendarmerie-Korps für Oktober und November 1918, Gendarmerie, Monatsrapporte, NLA OL 136 Nr. 3085. 36. Jochen Oltmer, “Introduction”, in Jochen Oltmer (ed.), Kriegsgefangene im Europa des Ersten Weltkriegs, Paderborn: Schöningh, 2006, p. 11. 37. Sadly, due to the lack of evidence, it is not possible to confirm the total number of POWs in Oldenburg. 38. Oldenburg 1914–1918, p. 18.

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39. Uta Hinz, Gefangen im Großen Krieg. Kriegsgefangenschaft in Deutschland 1914–1921, Essen: Klartext, 2006, p. 128. 40. The vast majority of POWs were Russians: according to military authorities they numbered more than 1235 million, against a total of 1462 million captives held in German camps in October 1916. Wilhelm Doegen, Kriegsgefangene Völker. Der Kriegsgefangenen Haltung und Schicksal in Deutschland, Berlin: Verl. für Politik und Wirtschaft, 1921, pp. 28–29. 41. Mitteilung des Gendarmerie-Kommandos v. 22 June 1916, Stabsbefehle 1911–1922, NLA OL 204 Nr. 181. 42. Klaus Weinhauer, “Labour Movements and Strikes, Social Conflict and Control, Protest and Repression (Germany)”, in Encyclopedia 1914– 1918, online version https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/ article/labour_movements_and_strikes_social_conflict_and_control_protest_and_repression_germany (28 February 2019). 43. Coal was indispensable for the people to keep their houses warm against the cold of winter. 44.  Stadtgeschichte Delmenhorst, p. 60. 45. Geheimer Stabsbefehl from 24 February 1917, Stabsbefehle 1911–1922, NLA OL 204 Nr. 179. 46.  Litewka: a comfortable coat worn in the normal Gendarmerie service. 47.  Gend.-Kdo. to MdI from 9 June 1915, answer from 10 June 1916, Gendarmerie-Kommando. Litewken, NLA OL 204 Nr. 285. 48. Stabsbefehl from 1 March 1916, Stabsbefehle 1911–1922, NLA OL 204 Nr. 179. 49. Verfügung des Kommandos from 22 September 1917, Stabsbefehle 1911– 1922, NLA OL 204 Nr. 179. 50. Gend.-Kdo. to Stellvertretendes Generalkommando IX. AK Altona from 23 September 1918, Gendarmerie-Kommando. Lieferung von Stiefeln und Schnürschuhen aus den Militärbeständen des oldenburg. Inf. Regts. Nr. 91, NLA OL 204 Nr. 286. 51. Das hundertjährige Bestehen des Groß. Oldenb. Gendarmerie-Korps, in Nachrichten für Stadt und Land (Oldenburg) from 3 April 1918, p. 5. 52. Gerhard Wiechmann, “Die Festungsgendarmerie Wilhelmshaven 1916– 1919 als Unikum deutscher Polizeigeschichte”, in Nachrichten des Marschenrates zur Förderung der Forschung im Küstengebiet der Nordsee, No. 53, 2016, pp. 36–41, online version http://www.nihk.de/fileadmin/resources/images/Marschenrat/nachrichtenblatt_53_2016.pdf (28 February 2019). 53.  StGKdo X. A.K., the commanding general v. Linde-Suden from 12 November 1916 to the Oldenburgisches Staatsministerium, Acta betreffend Kommandierung von Unteroffizieren zur Unterstützung der Gendarmerie während des Krieges und ferner (Hilfsgendarmen), 1916– 1923, NLA OL 136 Nr. 3090.

138  G. WIECHMANN AND G. PAYEN 54. Bekanntmachung des StGKdo X. A.K. v. 23 November 1916, Acta betreffend Kommandierung von Unteroffizieren zur Unterstützung der Gendarmerie während des Krieges und ferner (Hilfsgendarmen), 1916– 1923, NLA OL 136 Nr. 3090. 55. Acta betreffend Kommandierung von Unteroffizieren zur Unterstützung der Gendarmerie während des Krieges und ferner (Hilfsgendarmen), 1916–1923, NLA OL 136 Nr. 3090. 56.  Gend.-Kdo. to MdI from 29 September 1917, Acta betreffend Kommandierung von Unteroffizieren zur Unterstützung der Gendarmerie während des Krieges und ferner (Hilfsgendarmen), 1916–1923, NLA OL 136 Nr. 3090. 57.  Gend.-Kdo. and MdI from 26 October 1917, Acta betreffend Kommandierung von Unteroffizieren zur Unterstützung der Gendarmerie während des Krieges und ferner (Hilfsgendarmen), 1916–1923, NLA OL 136 Nr. 3090. 58. The number of auxiliaries seems to have varied often. 59. Amt Cloppenburg to MdI from 28 November and 11 October 1917, Acta betreffend Kommandierung von Unteroffizieren zur Unterstützung der Gendarmerie während des Krieges und ferner (Hilfsgendarmen), 1916–1923, NLA OL 136 Nr. 3090. 60. Auszug aus den Verhandlungen des XXXIII. Landtags, 2. Versammlung, 4. Sitzung, 17. Dezember 1917, Acta betreffend Kommandierung von Unteroffizieren zur Unterstützung der Gendarmerie während des Krieges und ferner (Hilfsgendarmen), 1916–1923, NLA OL 136 Nr. 3090. 61. Id. “Das habe ich von unseren alten bewährten Gendarmen nicht gehört. Sondern die Erfahrung hat gelehrt, dass diese, die Verhältnisse kennen, mit viel mehr Geschick und Takt diese an sich heikle Frage behandeln”. 62. Id. 63.  We do not currently have more precise information on these: they were probably railway stations, the red-light district, perhaps ports in Rüstringen/Wilhelmshaven, pubs or restaurants or locations of black marketeering. 64.  Kundmachung des Direktoriums des Freistaats Oldenburg, Abteilung des Innern. Nr. 11752, Verordnungsblatt für das Großherzogliche Gendarmerie-Korps, Nr. 17, 25 November 1918, p. 105. The Verordnungsblatt was published monthly from July 1917. 65.  Gendarmerieverein e.V. Nordenham to Landtag from 8 March 1926, NLA OL 39 Nr. 18425. 66. Report of the Landtag committee from 12 April 1926, NLA OL 39 Nr. 18425. 67. Amt Oldenburg to MdI from 13 December 1917. Amt Butjadingen to MdI v. 3 December 1917, NLA OL 39 Nr. 18425.

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68. Amt Elsfleth an Direktorium, Abteilung des Innern from 24 February 1919, Acta betreffend Kommandierung von Unteroffizieren zur Unterstützung der Gendarmerie während des Krieges und ferner (Hilfsgendarmen), 1916–1923, NLA OL 136 Nr. 3090. 69. Gend.-Kdo. an Direktorium, Abteilung des Innern, from 10 April 1919, Acta betreffend Kommandierung von Unteroffizieren zur Unterstützung der Gendarmerie während des Krieges und ferner (Hilfsgendarmen), 1916–1923, NLA OL 136 Nr. 3090. 70. Antrag des Direktoriums v. 26 April 1919, Anlage 14 Verfassunggebende Landesversammlung 1919, Acta betreffend Kommandierung von Unteroffizieren zur Unterstützung der Gendarmerie während des Krieges und ferner (Hilfsgendarmen), 1916–1923, NLA OL 136 Nr. 3090. 71. Raymond B. Fosdick, European Police Systems, Montclair: NJ Patterson Smith, 1969 (Reprint of 1915), p. 67. Fosdick, an American lawyer, who investigated European police forces as a possibly role model for the American police system, plainly stated that the Reichsverfassung just did not mention police affairs because they were entirely the responsibility of the German federal states.

CHAPTER 10

The Gendarmerie of Luxembourg Gérald Arboit

To examine the Gendarmerie of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg during the First World War, one must confront two distinct realities. The first concerns the lack of archives in Luxembourg, as is the case for any number of subjects other than the country’s railways and steel industry. The second stems from the first: a lack of interest on the part of the small number of Luxembourger historians, and a large number of popular misconceptions. This lack of interest might actually be considered a good thing, however, for it demonstrates the depoliticisation of law enforcement in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, while the prevalence of misconceptions is the result of an essentially bureaucratic history of the force.1 Independent of the biases of national scholarship, the history of the Grand Ducal Gendarmerie runs into the same historiographic lacunae as its European counterparts. Like them, it rests uneasily between an exclusive concern with the nineteenth century2 and an overabundance of attention paid to the Second World War.3 To this may be added a typically Luxembourger tendency to view the “first European civil war” in light of the shadows cast by the second, elevated to the status of

G. Arboit (*)  Sorbonne University, UMR 8138 SIRICE, Paris, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_10

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“memory matrix”4 (matrice mémorielle). The goal of this chapter is thus to lift the veil from the nationwide administration of a neutral country coming to terms with completely unprecedented circumstances, in the form of military invasion and economic blockade. The Gendarmerie, a rural police corps, became the primary force defending the neutrality of Luxembourg, as well as protecting the economic and social order of the country.

The Gendarmerie of Luxembourg in the Summer of 1914 The Luxembourg Gendarmerie is unique above all in that it is the lone national police force in the monarchy, which was established by the French Revolution from Brussels in 1796; international law (in the 1867 Treaty of London) required the state to maintain strict political neutrality in a country enveloped geographically by an economic alliance with its German cousin (the Prussian Zollverein, in 1842). The handful of large towns in the centre and south (Luxembourg, Mersch, Ettelbruck, Diekirch, Esch-sur-Alzette, Differdange) remained formally outside the gendarmes’ jurisdiction, in that they possessed municipal police forces of their own, under the command of local authorities. But the Superintendents of Police were recruited from the non-commissioned officer class of the Gendarmerie, or sometimes even from among its brigadiers. This tendency reinforces the notion that the Gendarmerie should be understood as the safety net for the Grand Duchy. Parliamentary debates after 1867 emphasised this point as well, and the law of 16 February 1881 consecrated the superiority of the gendarmes over the company of volunteers who with them composed the “armed force” of Luxembourg.5 This hierarchy was justified by their practical utility, the volunteers being viewed as little more than a pool from which to recruit postmen, customs agents, roadmen, forestry rangers, rural policeman (gardes-champêtres) and municipal police. When the 1881 law was reformed in the spring of 1911, the government proposed a “reserve system” which would draw upon military veterans who had accepted employment with the state. The proposal was never adopted by parliament,6 but the question of how to reinforce the ranks of the Gendarmerie remained an open one up until the outbreak of the First World War. A commission was created to study the question in the autumn of 1916, but the project remained a purely formal exercise for an additional 4 years.7

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The problem of manpower available to the Gendarmerie, and to a lesser extent that of the volunteer company, was made abundantly clear during the First World War. The reform passed in the law of 16 February 1911 was designed to respond to the “increase in the population” of young men in the south of the country; this itself was the result of 3 decades of regional industrial growth and the unobstructed circulation of the “dangerous class” that furnished the labour force between Luxembourg, Meurthe-et-Moselle and the Lothringen, a class drawn from throughout Europe, but especially from Italy. The border was no longer a barrier for individuals seeking to avoid French, Belgian or German authorities; Luxembourg was a haven where it was easy to disappear in the crowd. The 160 gendarmes, established in the 1881 law, were no longer enough to deal with the evolving security conditions the corps now had to face. The 20 men and supplementary brigade authorised by parliament in light of the strikes in France (1905–1906) and Lorraine (1907) were insufficient to handle the strike of January 1912. In the 1913 budget, deputies authorised the addition of 10 men to the Gendarmerie, along with 3 machine guns (Fig. 10.1).8 This perception of a growing domestic threat on the part of parliament was based primarily upon a rise in criminality within the Grand Duchy. But these statistics disproportionately emphasised the Luxembourg arrondissement, where 20 of the Gendarmerie’s 33 brigades and 65% of its effective          ϭϵϭϵ

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Fig. 10.1  Number of crimes recorded by the Luxembourg Gendarmerie (1900–1919). Source La Gendarmerie au Luxembourg, 1798–1935, Luxembourg, Worré-Mertens, 1935, p. 255

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force, including 25 gendarmes in the capital city alone, were stationed. The response offered by the Gendarmerie largely addressed the demands of industrialists clustered in that part of the country to “stifle any [contingent] disorders”.9 Some 57% of the population, however, lived in the arrondissement of Diekirch, which included the northern part of the country. With 186 men, or 1 gendarme for every 1420 inhabitants, the company of gendarmes there was little more than a “rural” police (66.2% of its statements) rather than a true “judicial” police (17%). It would take until the reign of the Grand Duchess Marie-Adélaïde (1912) for the Gendarmerie to come under the department of Public Force for its administration and the department of Justice for its operations. These imbalances can be explained by the deployment of the brigades, which took place in 1895. They were largely stationed along the routes of the major railways (Prince-Henri and Guillaume-Luxembourg) and border crossings with Belgium, France and Germany, most notably across the bridges along the Moselle; later, the rural villages that grew to support the steel industry were added as they progressively expanded. As Luxembourg was not yet the land of milk and honey that it would become after the Second World War, but rather a liberal state still establishing itself after its recent independence (1867) and in response to the issues confronting it, the expansion of the Gendarmerie was not a major priority. The force had to make do with the resources available to it in order to accomplish its missions and make itself modern. With respect to the training of its ranks, in 1891 the Grand Duke Adolf von Nassau ordered future officers of the companies of Gendarmerie or volunteers to attend the Theresianische Militärakademie in Vienna, where officers of the k.u.k. Infanterie-Regimentes Adolf Grossherzog von Luxembourg, Herzog zu Nassau Nr. 15 were already being trained; the first contingent arrived in 1896, composed of four non-commissioned officers—two of whom (Eugène Ferron and Michel Franck) were later assigned to the Gendarmerie after a stint in command of the volunteers. This pattern of back-and-forth between the two companies was not yet a means to advance one’s career, but rather an expedient to make up for a lack of personnel. Thus, on 14 June 1912, First Lieutenant Ferron was named commandant of the Gendarmerie for the arrondissement of Diekirch, replacing Joseph Beck, who was promoted to captain and head of the volunteer company. Three years later, Major Emile Van Dyck, commandant of the armed force of the Grand Duchy since 11 January 1900, asserted his prerogative to step down. On 30 January 1915, a game of musical chairs ensued whose the Grand Ducal Army had the

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secret: Captain Pierre Heckmann, head of the Gendarmerie company for 15 years, was named major-commandant, while Captain Beck replaced him in the Gendarmerie company, and Beck himself was replaced by First Lieutenant Frank, who was also promoted to captain. Among the non-commissioned officers, Ferron remained in Diekirch, while Lieutenant Maurice Stein left the company of volunteers and assumed the role of “military service as commandant of the arrondissement of Luxembourg”. Upon the death of Major Heckmann on 14 December 1921, these officers all advanced one step up the ladder. The real innovation in terms of Gendarmerie operational adaptation to the times came with the decision to create “a special section” (1903–1914). The advocate general (avocat général) had in mind a judicial police force, like in Belgium, while the attorney general (procureur général) was looking for a criminal police force, like in Germany. For his part, Heckmann wanted more of a “mobile brigade” that was capable of responding to strikes, along the lines of the French “Tiger Brigades” (brigades du Tigre in reference to Clemenceau, Minister of the Interior who created them and who was so nicknamed). The result was a compromise between all these forms of law enforcement, trained professionally in France, in which only the detective branch adopted innovations of forensic policing under the title “criminal brigade”.10

The Gendarmerie and the Neutrality of Luxembourg In late July 1914, this evolving Gendarmerie was on the front lines of the German invasion. The government asked it to report on the movements of the German armies along the country’s borders. The frontier brigades returned a wide range of information. On 31 July, civilian patrols were led by gendarmes Joseph Kugener of Rodange and Nicolas Peters of Rumelange in the border zones of Meurthe-et-Moselle and Lothringen. On the bridges spanning the Moselle, meanwhile, gendarmes passed the time in conversation with their German colleagues. The first dispatches regarded the closure of the German border to both human traffic as well as exports of food and provisions “from Prussia to Luxembourg”. Mobilisation also emptied the spa town of its French and Belgian vacationers, with the Lothringener stampeding to purchase coffee, food and salt—still relatively cheap, although prices were known to jump by as much as 50% in a single day. The dispatches from the Gendarmerie along the border relayed the panic gripping the people of Luxembourg in the

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face of emptying shops and their inability to report to work. By 1 August, industry in the three fraternal nations had ground to a halt. In Rodange, Kugener relayed the widespread concerns among the population with respect to the probable arrival of unemployed foreigners (Fig. 10.2).11 In the meantime, the criminal brigade turned its attention to espionage, the government having been misinformed by a note from the German legation, tracking down sources of French and German influence. But the restriction on activities related to the defence of Luxembourg’s neutrality was relaxed, after the spring of 1914, in favour of the deportation of known “spies”. After pursuing an English agent from January through March, attention turned to the Germans, beginning in Namur and Liège. And like the preceding spring, so-called

Fig. 10.2  Brigades of the Luxembourg Gendarmerie in 1914 (Credit G. Arboit)

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“tension travellers” (Spannungsreisenden) were compelled to return to their country of origin.12 Other cases of espionage were uncovered here and there, most notably by the brigade in Differdange, on the French border. Then, at 4.00 p.m. on 1 August, while the gendarmes stationed on the bridges of the Moselle learned of the state of war between Germany and France from their German colleagues, a squadron of the Infanterie Regiment N. 69 occupied the railway station at Trois-Vierges. The objective of this special operation by the Abteilung IIIb, the German intelligence service, was to prevent France from using the railway to invade Germany.13 In fact, as reports from the first Luxembourger gendarmes to encounter the “Prussian” troops indicate, the invaders had no knowledge of French positions. They all expected a violent French response, explaining away their harsh treatment of the gendarmes and railway and telegraph staff in Bettembourg and Grevenmacher, the primary railway connections and bridge to German territory. In the face of invasion,14 the Gendarmerie began as of 2 August to focus on defending neutrality. Wherever German military commanders appeared, they were presented with a formal complaint regarding their violation of the 1867 Treaty of London; on some occasions, gendarmes oversaw the evacuation of troops towards the Belgian or French border.15 Above all, they saw to it that the local population obeyed the law, that is, that they refrained from committing any hostile act, from random acts of resistance to more serious offenses like espionage or theft of war matériel. When, in the autumn of 1914, the Geheime Feldpolizei of the Fourth Army began to dismantle French networks in the Grand Duchy, on the basis of intelligence seized from French archives, the Gendarmerie sought to become more proactive. Leaving to their fate those already “burned” by the German revelations, the Gendarmerie sought to protect any undercover Luxembourg nationals from being brought before the military tribunal of the 30th Infanteriebrigade of Trier; in Luxembourg, they would either be found innocent or brought before local tribunals, which did not prosecute either espionage or treason. The criminal brigade likewise attempted to uncover the agents that the Geheime Feldpolizei sought to infiltrate into France and effectively remove them from the playing field by revealing their identities.16 In the same spirit, the Gendarmerie moved to arrest soldiers from Allied nations on national soil, rather than let them fall into the hands of the Germans. Thus, when French and English planes were forced to make emergency landings at Beaufort and Clémency on 13 August 1917 and 17 September

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1918, respectively, gendarmes raced to extract the aviators from the custody of the Geheime Feldpolizei by appealing to the terms of the Hague Convention (1907). But oversight of the occupation was not limited to playing defence against Germany. The Gendarmerie also sought to intervene judicially in the war effort. Of course, it could not effectively resist any atrocities committed by German soldiers or officers, whether due to drunkenness or intoxication with their own power; gendarmes recorded such actions, and even on some occasions managed to prevent them.17 They had greater success, however, intervening to protect the extraterritoriality of Allied legations, entrusted to the protection of the volunteer company. Thus, on 9 March 1917, the criminal brigade was invited to investigate a theft that occurred at the French mission two days earlier; they discovered that two similar crimes had previously been hushed up by Major-Commandant Emile Van Dyck, both there (in October 1914) and at the Belgian mission.18 More tragically, the Gendarmerie was in position to record the human impact of Allied bombardment. From 3 October 1915 until 11 November 1918, gendarmes were called on 137 occasions to 28 different towns and villages, to declare the death of 53 people.19 The Gendarmerie was also called upon to oversee what became an all too common occurrence, intervening on 26 September 1914 to remove shells from German artillery found in the capital. Six days earlier, in Rodange, they had been asked to record the damage sustained during an exchange of fire between French and German soldiers … in the room of the gendarme Nicolas Reuter.

The Gendarmerie as Defender of Luxembourg’s Economy The defence of neutrality was an obvious objective, in the sense that the Gendarmerie was a key component of institutions that were determined to keep functioning, be it the justice system, the government as a whole, or the Grand Duchy itself. The same was true of the economy, thrown into disarray by the blockade of Germany, a symbol of the government’s inability to provide for its own people.20 This issue began to assume worrying proportions for the government in March 1915, as evidenced by the findings of the Gendarmerie based on new legislative measures to protect the economic interests of the country in wartime. Scant notes exist on the smuggling operations organised by the German Army, despite the diplomatic concerns such incidents occasioned.21

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To examine the defence of the country’s economic interests, one must look instead at price monitoring,22 enforcement of restrictions on consumption23 and oversight of grain stores24 and livestock.25 In the spring of 1916, Major-Commandant Heckmann established “an organisation plan for the occupation of the frontier [by] the volunteer company” at the behest of the government. The Gendarmerie was similarly involved in filling spaces left unguarded by the army, particularly those between two smaller brigades, as in Trois-Vierges and Weiswampach in the north, and Remich and Rumelange in the south.26 These measures fell outside the scope of the Gendarmerie’s police duties in the countryside, although they were initially (in 1914–1915) understood as part of their mission with respect to public health. They were dictated by a context characterised by widespread shortages and imbalances of supply and demand. The situation reached such a point that on 18 November 1916 the government established mobile inspection brigades to monitor harvests and livestock. Importantly, they reported to the administration of contributions and excises, rather than the Gendarmerie (Fig. 10.3). The latter felt they were already taking on a lot of work. Heckmann did not hesitate to call this creation a “grave, unmerited, and surely unwanted humiliation” by the government. He engaged in a veritable guerrilla war with the executive, refusing to see his gendarmes reduced to the role of “mere observer […] of operations undertaken by other authorities”.27 He reacted to the replacement of the gendarmes with ϳϬϬϬ ϲϬϬϬ ϱϬϬϬ ϰϬϬϬ ϯϬϬϬ ϮϬϬϬ ϭϬϬϬ Ϭ

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Fig. 10.3  Economic reports by the Gendarmerie. Source La Gendarmerie au Luxembourg, 1798–1935, Luxembourg, Worré-Mertens, 1935, p. 255

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customs officers on 9 December 1916 by creating the “mobile brigade” discussed before the war; this was entrusted to Brigadier Jean Nickels, and included two gendarmes, Nicholas Galles and Pierre de Boursy. Heckmann thus defied the order of Prime Minister Victor Thorn, the former justice minister, who argued the submission of the Gendarmerie to the control of civilian authorities was an entirely legal manoeuvre.28 Heckmann, in contrast, believed that the decision “[would] damage the prestige of the Gendarmerie and deprive the Corps of the public’s trust, which is the source of its strength, esteem, and authority”. This bureaucratic guerrilla war was not properly the business of the Gendarmerie, but that was not how Heckmann saw it. His boss, Captain Beck, grumbled about the lack of coordination between the two inspecting brigades. This was all the more evident for the fact that his relationship with the head of the mobile brigade, Michel Wilwers, placed in charge of contributions from Luxembourg, was not the greatest. But Heckmann held out until the spring of 1918, when he understood that the economic situation was so critical that the mobile brigade could no longer act without the support of the Gendarmerie.29 This situation put a strain on the relationship between gendarmes and customs officials, particularly in Weiswampach, leading to the recall of deputy Jean-Pierre Jérôme Thinnes.30 It also led to discontent within the ranks of the Gendarmerie. In 1916 and 1917, six gendarmes left the service, as well as any claim they had to a pension, further exacerbating the numbers problem. The centre-left newspaper Escher Tageblatt could hardly fail to pick up on the situation. On 1 September 1917, an editorial titled Unserer Gendarmen [“Our Gendarmes”] described the harsh terms of service in the brigades: the 15-hour workdays, the heavily worn uniforms needing to be mended as well as the requirement to learn Italian while off-duty in order to hold on to one’s position in the south and avoid transfer to the north, in the Ardennes, at one’s own expense. Heckmann brought the matter before a judge, who upheld the “offensive character of the article”, and had the daily paper formally censured.31 In an irony of history, once it was subjected to a domestic social crisis, the Gendarmerie also monitored the rise of discontent among the people of Luxembourg itself; discontent nourished by the political crisis that ensued following the death of Prime Minister Paul Eyschen, who had governed the country from 1888 until 1915, in addition to economic decline. New Prime Minister Victor Thorn was no fool. On the evening of 1 June 1917, after 2 days of growing calls for a general

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strike, he summoned Heckmann to inform him that “the gendarmes and police [should] not feel themselves bound by the measures adopted by the German military authorities regarding questions related to the strike”. Presented as an appeal to uphold the law, the politician sought to prevent the disorder from distracting the army from the defence of Luxembourg’s neutrality and its economy. He even took the time to remind the officer by letter the next day.32 The Major-Commandant got the message, but had to wait for the naming of the new government, on 18 June 1917, to present his evaluation of the Gendarmerie. The situation was worse than that revealed by the Tageblatt in its interview with the gendarme Nicolas Waldbillig.33 According to Heckmann, understaffing had reduced the gendarmes to 1911 levels, that is, 160 men. The company was overburdened, suffering from the rising cost of living and increasingly restless. The health of its members had declined under the weight of deprivation; six gendarmes were dead. Many servicemen were forced to hold down a second job in the private sector (in commerce, security or business) to supplement their salaries. The situation was no better in the army. In both cases, manpower was scarcely sufficient to handle the situation. Accordingly, he requested “the means to fully staff the corps of gendarmes and volunteers”. On 9 November 1918, he made the same demand of Kauffman’s successor, Emile Reuter. This time, he framed the request in terms of “reinforcement of the Gendarmerie during the retreat of German soldiers”, in order to ensure the “security of the country against this scum [racaille]”. He also proposed to simply staff a “reserve”, discussed in 1911, capable of supporting the mobile brigade. This project had been under examination by the chief of defence (Heckmann, Beck and Franck) since September 1916.34 But the coffers were empty, and the people would not have tolerated addressing the fate of the armed forces without taking their own suffering into account. Reports from the Gendarmerie foreshadowed the political crisis of the winter of 1918 since the preceding summer. In Rumelange, the echoes of the Russian Revolution of February gave new life to criticisms of the Grand Duchess Marie-Adélaïde.35 That’s not counting the echoes of the German Revolution of November 1918, from the soldier’s council of Diedenhofen (Thionville) and the disorders resulting from the long retreat of imperial soldiers towards a Reich in ruins. Factories witnessed strikes. The Gendarmerie monitored the demonstrations that took place throughout the south (Rodange,

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Differdange, Esch-sur-Alzette, Dudelange and Rumelange) as well as the north (Ettelbruck) and in the capital.36 At the same time, a petition was circulated within the corps, which attracted the signatures of some 90% of the gendarmes. The petition was presented by “some of the oldest gendarmes” at the general assembly of the armed forces, not just the volunteers, on 20 December 1918 in the barracks at Saint-Esprit, in the ancient fortress of Luxembourg. They asked for what Waldbillig had displayed to the journalist who interviewed him, and what Heckmann had employed towards Kauffman. They, too, demanded the right to speak!37 On 9 January 1919, while the volunteer company threw itself into the republican revolution already underway, the gendarmes were left isolated in their brigades. They had returned to work in the name of the economy and security of the Grand Duchy. Though the movement was subdued by the French Army and military police (prévôté), the Gendarmerie of Luxembourg reaffirmed itself during the crisis, as it had throughout the war, as the armed force of the legal government. While the law of 13 August 1921 concerning the discipline of the company of gendarmes seemed to turn back the clock, it could not undo the impact on personnel of salary increases and readjustment of office and traveling expenses of February 1918, and April, May and June 1919. In addition, 13 new colleagues also rejoined the brigades. Their fate was more enviable than that of the volunteer company, which was disbanded.

Conclusions During the First World War, the Gendarmerie of Luxembourg underwent an evolution that turned it into an indispensable auxiliary of the government. Its social malaise was but a parenthesis. The task of modernising the armed forces in the pre-war years was accelerated during the war, no longer thanks to a “circulation of police”, that is, by the emulation of foreign police forces, but rather by the invention of economic control. The Gendarmerie thus established itself as the guarantor of the country’s independence, but also, in light of its leniency with agents from Allied countries—whether aviators or spies—as an instrument for the preservation of Luxembourg’s neutrality against German occupation, a demonstration of its engagement with the Allied powers.

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Notes











1. Marc Steffen, Die Aufrechterhaltung von Recht und Ordnung während des ersten Weltkrieges. Aufgabenbereiche der luxemburgischen Gendarmerie, MA thesis (University of Luxembourg), 2015. 2. Marc Schoentgen, Die Gendarmerie des Grossherzogtums Luxemburg (1840–1914): die Sicherung der inneren Ordnung, thesis at the end of the pedagogical internship, Luxembourg, 1996, and “Diener des Staates. Funktions- und Strukturwandel der luxemburgischen Gendarmerie im 19. Jahrhundert, 1840–1914”, in Gilbert Trausch (ed.), La Gendarmerie au Luxembourg/Die Gendarmerie in Luxemburg: 1797– 1997, Luxembourg: Gendarmerie grand-ducale/Impr. St. Paul, 1997, pp. 79–220. 3.  Fernand Froehling, “Der 2. Weltkrieg, 10. Mai 1940–10. September 1944”; Charles Hamen and Jacques Klein, “Exécution: la Gendarmerie et son rôle d’exécuteur de la justice après la Seconde Guerre mondiale”, in Gilbert Trausch (ed.), La Gendarmerie au Luxembourg/Die Gendarmerie in Luxemburg, pp. 277–302, 303–308. 4.  Benoît Majerus, “Les historiens luxembourgeois monomaniaques? Histoires de la Première Guerre mondiale au Luxembourg”, in Benoît Majerus, Charles Roemer, and Gianna Thomes (eds.), Guerre(s) au Luxembourg/Krieg(e) in Luxembourg 1914–1918, Luxembourg: Capybarabooks/Université de Luxembourg, 2014, p. 10. 5.  Archives nationales du Luxembourg [hereinafter ANLux], CdD [Chambre des députés]-1250 and 1717, Luxembourg, Die Verstärkung der Gendarmerie, 1885 et 1904–1905. 6. ANLux, CdD-1876, Projet de loi concernant le renforcement de l’effectif de la gendarmerie, 21 April 1911; Projet admis par le Conseil d’État, Projet de loi portant modification de la loi du 16 February 1881 sur la force armée …, s.d. 7. ANLux, CdD-2129 and Archives diplomatiques (AD), Paris, Z 409-8, Projet d’organisation d’une troupe de police, 12 July 1921. 8. Compte rendu des séances de la Chambre des députés du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg, 1912–1913, Luxembourg: V. Buck, 14 January 1913. 9. ANLux, J-061-21, Crespin to Eyschen, 21 January 1881. 10. Ibid., J-022-44 and Laurent López, “‘Nous doter de vrais gendarmes de police’. Genèse, essor et adaptations de la gendarmerie luxembourgeoise (1839–1914)”, in Arnaud-Dominique Houte and Jean-Noël Luc (eds.), Les gendarmeries dans le monde (XIXe–XXIe siècles), Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2016, pp. 109–120. 11. ANLux, AE-00404 et 00405, passim.

154  G. ARBOIT 12. Gérald Arboit, “Espionner le Grand-duché de Luxembourg. Une guerre secrète méconnue pendant la Première Guerre mondiale”, Hémecht, No. 1, 2015, pp. 64–65; ANLux, AE-00404, Koenig et Delleré, 1 August 1914; Ulrich Trumpener, “War Premeditated? German Intelligence Operations in July 1914”, Central European History, No. 9, 1976, pp. 58–85. 13.  ANLux, AE-00404, note de Van Dyck, 1 August 1914. Ulrich Trumpener, “War Premeditated?” pp. 74–75. 14.  ANLux, AE-00404, 1 August 1914 and AE-0405, 2 August 1914, passim. 15. ANLux, AE-00405, Télégr. Heckmann à Eyschen, 6 August 1914. 16. Gérald Arboit, “Espionner le Grand-duché de Luxembourg”, pp. 70–76 and “Le procès de Heinrich Wetz. Une affaire d’espionnage méconnue de la Première Guerre mondiale”, Annales de l’Est, No. 2, 2014, pp. 167–188; ANLux, AE-00436, Delleré, 14 December 1914. 17.  ANLux, AE-00578, Bettembourg, 18 August; Schifflange, 5 October 1914; Diekirch, 9 February; Hosingen, 13 February; Remich, 1 October 1915. 18. ANLux, AE-00459, Delleré, Koenig, 9 and 11 March 1917. 19. ANLux, AE-00434, note, 11 March 1922. 20. Gérald Arboit, “Transition ou asphyxie? L’économie luxembourgeoise à l’épreuve de la Première Guerre mondiale”, in Benoît Majerus, Charles Roemer, and Gianna Thomes (eds.), Guerre(s) au Luxembourg/Krieg(e) in Luxembourg 1914–1918, pp. 81–89. 21.  ANLux, AE-00578, note, Bettembourg, 18 August; Schifflange, 5 October 1914; Hosingen, 13 February 1915; Bettembourg, 15 October 1918. 22. ANLux, Agri-A-196, Rédange, 4 and 27 February 1915; AE-00525, Brig. crim., 12 November 1916; Mondorf, 1 May; Rédange, 4 July; Esch-surAlzette, 7 July 1918; CI-055, Luxembourg, 30 November 1918. 23. ANLux, Agri-A-196, Mondorf, 13 March 1915; CI-055, Luxembourg, 12 December 1918. 24. ANLux, Agri-A-196, Rumelange, 11 March 1915. 25. ANLux, Trois-Vierges, 23 March; Clervaux and Ettelbruck, 31 March; Perlé, 6 April; Heinerscheid, 7 July 1915. 26.  ANLux, AE-00531, Heckmann to Thorn, 12 April 1916; AE-00525, Heckmann to Pesch, 30 October 1916. 27. ANLux, AE-00525 to Thorn, 20 November 1916. 28. ANLux, Thorn to Welter, 11 December 1916. 29. ANLux, AE-00525, Heckmann to Kauffman, 20 September 1918; Beck to Heckmann, 6 February 1917; Heckmann to Kauffman, 9 March 1918.

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30.  ANLux, Weiswampach, 1 August and 10 September 1918; Escher Tageblatt, 6 August 1917. 31.  Escher Tageblatt, 11 and 29 October 1917 and 5 and 25 February 1918. 32. Ministère d’état, Neutralité du Grand-Duché pendant la guerre de 1914– 1918. Attitude des pouvoirs publics, Luxembourg: V. Buck, 1919, p. 81. 33.  Escher Tageblatt, 11 October 1917. 34. ANLux, AE-00525 and J-076-83; AD, Z 409-8, op. cit. 35. ANLux, AE-00681, 26 August 1917. 36. ANLux, reports dated 10–20 November 1918. 37. Emil Eiffes, Die revolutionäre Bewegung in Luxemburg (1918/1919), Luxembourg, 1933, pp. 74–75.

CHAPTER 11

The Gendarmerie of the Habsburg Empire During the First World War Helmut Gebhardt

The General Organisation of Gendarmerie and Police The organisation of the Gendarmerie in the Habsburg Monarchy at the beginning of the twentieth century was based on the overall structure of the government of this state. As it was divided into the empire of Austria and the kingdom of Hungary, the Gendarmerie was divided as well, namely into the Imperial-Royal Gendarmerie in Austria with about 300 officers and 14,200 gendarmes and the Royal Gendarmerie in Hungary with circa 9000 gendarmes. In addition to these two units existed an independent Gendarmerie corps for Bosnia–Herzegovina, because this province was a condominium of Austria–Hungary, and this corps had a special structure.1 Even though these units of the Gendarmerie were completely separated, they all were part of the army—as well as the gendarmerie troops in France and other states. It should be mentioned that the organisation

H. Gebhardt (*)  University of Graz, Graz, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_11

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of the army was very complex. In the first place was the joint Imperial and Royal Army for the whole Austro-Hungarian Monarchy with the War Ministry at its head. Additionally, separate territorial troops were established in each of the two parts of the state: The Royal Hungarian Honved for the Kingdom of Hungary, under the control of the Honved Ministry, and the Imperial-Royal Landwehr for the Austrian half, under the Ministry of National Defence. The gendarmeries in Austria and Hungary were thus respectively subordinated to the Landwehr or the Honved and the gendarmes were supervised by military commanders. In security matters, however, the Gendarmerie units were subordinated to the civil security authorities, headed by the Ministry of the Interior. At the next level was a governor in every Austrian province and district commissioners taking the lowest rank. In addition to these regular gendarmerie organisations existed the Field Gendarmerie within the Austro-Hungarian Army. In the event of war, the soldiers of these corps were primarily recruited from the staff of regular gendarmeries, but a bigger part of this formation consisted of normal soldiers. The main tasks of the Field Gendarmerie were security matters concerning troop marches and barracks or other types of accommodation. Besides this, these gendarmes were also deployed as couriers and scouts. Last but not least, they had to keep a close watch on prisoners of war.2 Next to the Gendarmerie was a completely independent police organisation in the Austrian half of the Empire which was subordinated to the Ministry of the Interior. In the second half of the eighteenth century, state police authorities were established in many Austrian cities. A major reform of the police organisation was carried out in 1866. This reform cut police forces back to a skeleton size and most police headquarters were dissolved. Just a few police headquarters remained in some hotspots of the monarchy, namely in Vienna, Graz, Prague, Brno, Lviv, Krakow and Trieste. In the other major cities, namely Innsbruck, Salzburg, Linz, Klagenfurt, Ljubljana, Zadar, Opava and Chernivtsi security matters were transferred to the local municipalities.3 From that point onwards, these cities were responsible for the structure and funding of the police and for security management. They further had to establish their own security guards. There were no uniform standards, and thus police officers were not uniformly dressed. At this point in time it can be assumed that municipal security guards did not perform well. In addition, relationships and cooperation between the different cities tended to be unsatisfactory.4

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The Military Tasks at the Beginning of the War The Gendarmerie was used for multilayered tasks in the course of the First World War. This chapter considers its main missions. It was stated expressly that the gendarmerie could be entrusted with specific military tasks in the event of war.5 Consequently, the regular gendarmes were engaged with many new responsibilities at the beginning of the war. They played an active role in the mobilisation of soldiers and the investigation of deserters. They had to monitor particularly sensitive objects such as railroad installations, as well as the telegraph offices and important bridges.6 Right after the beginning of the war, the police force was commissioned to regularly inform the Ministry of the Interior on the mood of the population. Policemen were instructed to investigate public opinion on various topics at markets and events, in order to enable the war propaganda machine of the government to take appropriate countermeasures.7 Furthermore, the Gendarmerie was assigned to observe foreigners and to detect hostile secret agents. The police headquarters in Vienna was determined the central office for combating espionage by the Ministry of the Interior. This organisation was in close contact with the Intelligence Department of the army’s high command. Nevertheless, many police officers from criminal investigation departments were transferred to military authorities because of their demonstrated ability in counter-intelligence.8 Policemen and gendarmes also had to observe and arrest all potential sympathisers of enemy nations. For this purpose, large lists were compiled by the Gendarmerie to record anyone holding or sharing good opinions about the Russians and Serbs. In some provinces with a Slavic population, such as Styria, an excessive zeal was shown in this respect, especially in the first months of the war. Consequently, numerous citizens of the empire were detained.9 All these measures were possible because the most important fundamental rights were abrogated with the start of the war. As such, arrests and house searches without judicial approval were permitted.10 Additionally, Gendarmerie stations in the border areas to enemy states such as Serbia, Russia and Italy had special obligations. They had to observe borders constantly, and if necessary, had to cordon them off. In order to do this, the most important gendarmerie stations were

160  H. GEBHARDT

strengthened by reserves. In the summer of 1914, specific bodies of troops were formed from units comprising the Gendarmerie, which were immediately brought into action. These troops were supplemented by men from the financial police and reserves. The primary task of these troops was the protection of borders. Such troops usually took the form of very small units which comprised of, for example, only 30 men in Carinthia.11 In the eastern provinces of Galicia and Bukovina, gendarmerie troops were only confronted with the Russian Army. In August and September 1914, there were many minor encounters between these Gendarmerie units and Russian forces. These operations were mainly executed in order to delay and disrupt the advancement of the enemy. In addition, the Gendarmerie had to secure strategically important points such as bridges and train stations.12 Whereas regular army troops soon took over combat in Galicia, Gendarmerie units in Bukovina remained without support throughout the entire autumn of 1914. However, these Gendarmerie troops were the only military formations in the whole of the monarchy that could achieve military successes at the very beginning of the war. The commander of the gendarmerie in Bukovina was Colonel Eduard Fischer who had, prior to war, built up a network of informants in the Russian border area which he used comprehensively in wartime. Gendarmes had the advantage of having a good knowledge of local conditions. Under the command of Colonel Eduard Fischer, they even managed to recapture occupied territory from the Russians. However, it should be mentioned that these ambitious actions of gendarmerie troops had ultimately no decisive influence on the eastern front line.13

Further Tasks in War Zones Gendarmerie stations situated on the shores of the Adriatic Sea had special tasks assigned to them. In general, they were responsible for the protection of the extremely long coastline, from the Gulf of Trieste in the north to the Bay of Kotor in the south. Sometimes, even the detection of mines in the sea belonged to such monitoring tasks. A special unit of the Gendarmerie, which consisted of 200 men, was charged with guarding the monarchy’s major naval port in Pula, on the peninsula of Istria. The second most important naval base was located at Kotor, situated in the south of the province of Dalmatia. A large Gendarmerie unit was also stationed there. At the beginning of 1916, this Gendarmerie troop

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was involved in a very successful military operation against the forces of Montenegro, conquering a strategic region in the mountains.14 Additional Gendarmerie operations started in May 1915, when the Italians entered the war. The Italian front line spanned from high mountains to plains on the coast. At the very beginning of this part of the war, many gendarmes were involved in combat, once again proving to be very successful. Special units also existed, consisting of gendarmes and reserves. In the province of Carinthia, these units were in the line of duty for about 2 weeks, before the Imperial Army took over. Until the end of the war, fighting on the Italian front was very ferocious and brutal. Even under these extreme circumstances, Gendarmerie units carried out individual actions including conducting valuable reconnaissance and sometimes even participating in skirmishes with Italian units.15 In addition, gendarmes frequently coordinated many evacuations of hundreds of people and cattle; were assigned to saving the wounded and recovering the dead; and were involved in the general monitoring and control of those who were unreliable in terms of political attitude—such people were transferred from war zones to other parts of the monarchy. With reference to the Field Gendarmerie, it should be mentioned that a large number of gendarmes in this formation were not fully trained in matters of security. Nevertheless, the Field Gendarmerie was frequently assigned with regular police duties, particularly in occupied territories. These territories included, for example, certain parts of Albania, Montenegro, Serbia and the Russian part of Poland. In these areas, the Field Gendarmerie established many gendarmerie stations in order to keep the population under control. In Serbia, for instance, approximately 3500 gendarmes were on duty. In rural areas, gendarmerie stations with 12–15 gendarmes were established—500 gendarmes were stationed in Belgrade. These gendarmes were also involved in action against rebels. While there were great problems in occupied Serbia, the situation in the north of Albania was much easier to handle. This area was also occupied by the Imperial Army. The population, however, was very friendly and thus local inhabitants were often employed in large numbers as supporting street wardens.16

Problems in Interior Areas Numerous detached duties in the army had a great impact on the activities of the regular gendarmerie and the police in interior areas. At the beginning of the war 20% of the policemen in Vienna were conscripted to the military.17 Later on, up to 50% of regular gendarmes

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were engaged in military occupations in different parts of the Habsburg Monarchy. Serious staffing gaps were thereby created. These significant gaps could only be filled by a temporary engagement of retired gendarmes and others, who served as auxiliary gendarmes (Hilfsgendarmen). These men did not wear a regular gendarmerie uniform. They were instead issued with a wristband labelled “Gendarm”. At the end of the war, more than half the staff were auxiliary gendarmes.18 At this point it should be mentioned that crime rates in the interior of the state were different from rates experienced prior to war. After the outbreak of war, criminal acts initially declined at a striking rate, since many men, associated with crime, had joined military service. However, the number of crimes rose again sharply towards the end of the war. The miserable economic situation and insufficient supplies of essential goods played an important role in increasing crime. During the last weeks of the war, deserted soldiers, escaped prisoners of war and refugees made the situation even worse.19 In order to maintain the security service various organisational rules were changed. These changes included, for example, simplifications in the way official correspondence and notifications and reports were generated. Most messages had to be written in a very short form using a telegraphic style. The authorities were further instructed to no longer assign the gendarmerie to ancillary activities. In addition, orders had to be formulated more precisely with regards to the gendarmerie. Thus, gendarmes did not need to study files as intensively. There were also changes in organisational structure, with district Gendarmerie commanders being relieved from duty to conduct gendarmerie stations in their own towns. As a result, commanders were able to control individual gendarmerie stations even more intensively whilst at the same time, educating gendarmes about the new rules. Besides this, commanders also could participate in investigations of the major offences in their districts. Finally, the economic management of the Gendarmerie was simplified and restructured. The competencies for accounting were transferred from department commands to province gendarmerie commands operating at higher levels. It is worth noting that many of these reforms survived beyond the end of the war, remaining in effect for the Austrian gendarmerie for many years.20 Ultimately, serious problems for internal security arose as a consequence of the aforementioned reforms. These problems were exacerbated by the fact that the regular Gendarmerie took over several other important tasks.

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First, it should be emphasised that the Gendarmerie played a major role in the many economic measures put in place during wartime. Major measures included restrictions on food and the requisition of various goods needed to produce weapons as well as the supply of soldiers. This turned out to be problematic for gendarmes as many people were not always willing to deliver goods, such as oxen, horses, cars, motorbikes or various metal objects. There is one recorded incident of a gendarme wanting to use a local mill in the southern part of Styria only to be shot down by the miller in the autumn of 1916.21 Since provision for the general population became increasingly difficult, extreme price rises occurred frequently. In order to stop profiteering, a subject-specific department was created at police headquarters in Vienna in 1917. This department was also involved in the fight against clandestine trading and the black market.22 During the course of the war, various detention camps were built in the interior of the country. These camps were guarded by the gendarmerie and other military units. At the beginning of the war these camps were designated for hostiles. Subsequently, camps for prisoners of war were also set up. Finally, this was followed by the installation of camps for refugees. In all these camps, special branches, comprised of 20–30 gendarmes, were established by the gendarmerie. These branches often had to guard several thousand prisoners. Gendarmes were not only obliged to ensure peace and order inside such camps, but also to escort and supervise prisoners during their work outside such camps. These camps often had outbreaks of violence driven mainly by the dismal mood of detainees. Sometimes, such outbreaks could only just be brought under control by the Gendarmerie. Occasionally, gendarmes had to proceed with the use of arms. Unfortunately, quite a few people were injured or killed in such incidents. Furthermore, the miserable conditions in these camps resulted in a large number of deaths.23 In the second half of the war, the economy and provisions for the general population got worse. In cities, police had to ensure time and time again, that the provision of food supplies for the population took place in an organised manner. Riots outside empty shops occurred frequently.24 At this time, strikes broke out in different parts of the monarchy. Sometimes up to 2000 workers took part in these strikes. Small units of gendarmes were easily overwhelmed. Therefore, sometimes even soldiers from the regular army had to be deployed. The largest strike took place in January 1918 in the area of Vienna, with over 100,000

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workers taking strike action. Police and the army were therefore in great use.25 Besides, it should be mentioned that wartime placed great burden on gendarmes and their families. In order to alleviate suffering, a special extra payment was granted. In addition to their general salary, child support and benefits for invalided gendarmes were introduced. Additionally, charity foundations were established to assist with serious emergencies. The extraordinary performance of the 17,598 gendarmes on the active list at the end of the war was also recognised by the monarchy with 17,684 awards and a total of 2552 decorations being issued.26 In summary, it can be stated that the Gendarmerie of the Habsburg Empire played an important role in wartime policing; various military obligations had to be assumed especially in combat areas and civilian police functions in the monarchy’s interior brought many new challenges. After the end of World War I and the decay of the Habsburg Empire, several radical changes were implemented to the organisation of the Gendarmerie. On 6 November 1918, the rule of the monarchy in Bosnia ended, triggering the end of the Gendarmerie in Bosnia–Herzegovina. In Hungary, a communist dictatorship was established in 1919, which resulted in a temporary end to the Gendarmerie. However, one year later the Gendarmerie was re-established in Hungary, remaining in existence until the end of World War II in 1945.27 On 27 November 1918 the National Assembly of the Austrian Republic passed a new Gendarmerie Act that abandoned its previous military structure.28 The Gendarmerie in Austria was turned into a civil law enforcement agency and existed in that form until 2005.

Notes

1. Walter Wagner, “Die k. (u.) k. Armee – Gliederung und Aufgabenstellung”, in Adam Wandruszka and Peter Urbanitsch (eds.), Die Habsburgermonarchie 1848–1918. Band V: Die bewaffnete Macht, Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1987, pp. 237–239, 484; Helmut Gebhardt, “Les Mutations de la gendarmerie autrichienne, de sa naissance en 1849 à la chute des Habsbourg”, in Arnaud-Dominique Houte and Jean-Noël Luc (eds.), Les gendarmerie dans le monde, de la Révolution francaise à nos jours, Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2016, p. 136; Helmut Gebhardt, “The Military Organisation of the Habsburg Gendarmerie from 1849 to 1918”, SIAK Journal for Police Science and Practice—International

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Edition, 2015, p. 89; Ernst Fojan, “Geschichte des Gendarmeriekorps für Bosnien und Herzegowina”, in Fritz Hörmann and Gerald Hesztera (eds.), Zwischen Gefahr und Berufung – Gendarmerie in Österreich, Wien: Werfen, 1999, pp. 112–121. 2.  Sandor Szakaly, “Die Feldgendarmerie des Heeres”, GendarmerieRundschau, No. 3, 1996, pp. 29–37; Wagner, “Die k. (u.) k. Armee – Gliederung und Aufgabenstellung”, p. 484; Hermann Hinterstoisser, “Die Uniformierung der k.k. österreichischen Gendarmerie 1816–1918”, in Hermann Hinterstoisser and Peter Jung (eds.) Geschichte der Gendarmerie in Österreich-Ungarn: Adjustierung 1816–1918: Einsätze im Felde 1914–1918, Wien: Stöhr, 2000, p. 56. 3. Friedrich Jäger, Das große Buch der Polizei und Gendarmerie in Österreich, Graz: Weishaupt, 1990, p. 286. 4. Hermann Oberhummer, Die Wiener Polizei: Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte des Sicherheitswesens in den Ländern der ehemaligen ÖsterreichischUngarischen Monarchie, Vol II, Wien: Gerlach & Wiedling, 1938, p. 288. 5. Law on the Gendarmerie, §1. Reichsgesetzblatt, No. 1, 1895. 6. Franz Neubauer, Die Gendarmerie in Österreich 1849–1924, Wien: Gendarmerie Jubiläumsfonds, 1924, p. 203; Helmut Gebhardt, Die Gendarmerie in der Steiermark: von 1850 bis heute, Graz: Leykam, 1997, p. 182. 7. Franz Schnabl and Harald Seyrl, 133 Jahre Wiener Polizei: Ein reich bebildeter Spaziergang durch die Geschichte der Sicherheitswache, Wien: Echo, 2002, p. 100. 8. Engelbert Steinwender, Von der Stadtguardia zur Sicherheitswache: Wiener Polizeiwachen und ihre Zeit. Von der Frühzeit bis 1932, Graz: Weishaupt, 1992, p. 184; Heinrich Dehmal, “Geschichte des Kriminalbeamteninstitutes”, in Heinrich Dehmal, Oskar Dreßler et al. (eds.), Der österreichische Bundes-Kriminalbeamte: Gedenkwerk anläßlich des 80jährigen Bestandes des Kriminalbeamtenkorps Österreichs, Wien: Verlag für polizeiliche Fachliteratur, 1993, p. 43. 9. Martin Moll, Kein Burgfrieden: Der deutsch-slowenische Nationalitätenkonflikt in der Steiermark 1900–1918, Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2007, pp. 251–300. 10. Verordnung des Gesamtministeriums vom 25. Juli 1914, womit Ausnahmen von den bestehenden Gesetzen verfügt werden. Reichsgesetzblatt, No. 1581914. 11. Leopold Kepler, Die Gendarmerie in Österreich 1849–1974: 125 Jahre Pflichterfüllung, Graz: Leykam, 1974, p. 92; Leopold Salcher, “Kärntens Gendarmerie hat sich in schwerster Zeit großartig behauptet”, in Fritz Hörmann and Gerald Hesztera (eds.), Zwischen Gefahr und Berufung, p. 125; Daniel Schleich, Die österreichische Bundesgendarmerie: Beginn und Ende einer Ära, Saarbrücken: VDM, 2009, p. 36.



166  H. GEBHARDT 12. Franz Neubauer, Die Gendarmerie in Österreich 1849–1924, pp. 102– 120; Peter Jung, “Die Feldverwendung der österreichisch-ungarischen Gendarmerie 1914–1918”, in Hermann Hinterstoisser and Peter Jung (eds.) Geschichte der Gendarmerie in Österreich-Ungarn, pp. 89–97. 13. Gerald Hesztera, “Die Gendarmerie im Ersten Weltkrieg: Die Verteidigung der Bukowina”, in Friz Hörmann and Gerald Hesztera (eds.), Zwischen Gefahr und Berufung, p. 92; Peter Jung, “Die Feldverwendung der österreichisch-ungarischen Gendarmerie 1914–1918”, pp. 97–102. See Eduard Fischer, Krieg ohne Heer: Meine Verteidigung der Bukowina gegen die Russen, Wien, 1935. 14. Franz Neubauer, Die Gendarmerie in Österreich 1849–1924, pp. 132–135; Leopold Kepler, Die Gendarmerie in Österreich 1849–1974, p. 93; Peter Jung, “Die Feldverwendung der österreichisch-ungarischen Gendarmerie 1914–1918”, pp. 102–113. 15. Franz Neubauer, Die Gendarmerie in Österreich 1849–1924, pp. 135–144; Kepler, Die Gendarmerie in Österreich 1849–1974, p. 93; Leopold Salcher, “Kärntens Gendarmerie hat sich in schwerster Zeit großartig behauptet”, p. 127; Daniel Schleich, Die österreichische Bundesgendarmerie, p. 38; Peter Jung, “Die Feldverwendung der österreichisch-ungarischen Gendarmerie 1914–1918”, pp. 113–122. 16. Franz Neubauer, Die Gendarmerie in Österreich 1849–1924, pp. 150–158; Leopold Kepler, Die Gendarmerie in Österreich 1849–1974, p. 94; Peter Jung, “Die Feldverwendung der österreichisch-ungarischen Gendarmerie 1914–1918”, pp. 122–146. 17. Engelbert Steinwender, Von der Stadtguardia zur Sicherheitswache, p. 180. 18. Helmut Gebhardt, Die Gendarmerie in der Steiermark, p. 186. 19.  Heinrich Dehmal, “Geschichte des Kriminalbeamteninstitutes”, p. 48; Leopold Salcher, “Kärntens Gendarmerie hat sich in schwerster Zeit großartig behauptet”, p. 128. 20. Helmut Gebhardt, Die Gendarmerie in der Steiermark, pp.188–190. 21.  Heinrich Dehmal, “Geschichte des Kriminalbeamteninstitutes”, p. 52; Franz Neubauer, Die Gendarmerie in Österreich 1849–1924, p. 205; Leopold Salcher, “Kärntens Gendarmerie hat sich in schwerster Zeit großartig behauptet”, p. 128; Helmut Gebhardt, Die Gendarmerie in der Steiermark, p. 183. 22. Günther Bögl and Harad Seyrl, Die Wiener Polizei im Spiegel der Zeiten, Wien: Edition S, 1993, pp. 122–125; Franz Schnabl and Harald Seyrl, 133 Jahre Wiener Polizei, p. 105; Heinrich Dehmal, “Geschichte des Kriminalbeamteninstitutes”, p. 50. 23. Helmut Gebhardt, Die Gendarmerie in der Steiermark, p. 183. 24. Franz Schnabl and Harald Seyrl, 133 Jahre Wiener Polizei, p. 102. 25. Engelbert Steinwender, Von der Stadtguardia zur Sicherheitswache, p. 184.



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26. Leopold Kepler, Die Gendarmerie in Österreich 1849–1974, p. 94; Helmut Gebhardt, Die Gendarmerie in der Steiermark, p. 190. 27. Zoltan Pinczés, Kurze Zusammenfassung der Geschichte, Organisation, des Dienstes, der Ausbildung sowie der wichtigeren inneren Ausgestaltung der königlich ungarischen Gendarmerie, Budapest, 1926, p. 8. 28. Staatsgesetzblatt für den Staat Deutschösterreich, No. 75, 1918.

CHAPTER 12

The Serbian Gendarmerie’s Involvement in the First World War: From Keeping Order at the Rear to Fighting on the Front Line Stanislav Sretenović

A typical Yugoslavian military encyclopaedia, dating back to the Communist era, does mention the existence of Gendarmerie forces in Serbia from 1860 but does not breathe a word about their involvement in WWI.1 Yet this involvement was significant and deserves more attention than the insufficient explorations hitherto provided by both Serbian and foreign historians. Be it in times of war or peace, in the nineteenth century as well as in the first half of the twentieth century, gendarmes were never popular among Serbians nor was their profession respected. In a country numbering circa 3 million inhabitants—a total that had increased to 4.5 million on the eve of WWI as a result of the Balkan Wars, Gendarmerie expenditures were only allowed an estimated 4% of the overall military budget. This average estimate must be accepted with caution since variations often occurred in accordance with the internal or external requirements

S. Sretenović (*)  Institute of Contemporary History, Belgrade, Serbia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_12

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of a country, however, scant resources were the norm. Even when, after nearly 50 years of existence, the Serbian Gendarmerie entered the war and played an active part in the fighting, fully sharing in Serbia’s tragic history, its involvement throughout the conflict remained in the shadows of operations conducted by the regular troops of the Serbian Army. When the conflict came to an end, the military action of the Gendarmerie elicited little interest in the kingdom and gendarmes felt aggrieved by this lack of recognition. As late as 1932, a Gendarmerie major, when comparing the reputation of his corps to that of the army, expressed his disappointment in an article he published underlining how gendarmes had returned to their units having fulfilled their duties to the utmost but found “the glory crowning our army had not been extended to the Gendarmerie”, something, he added, that was perhaps “the usual fate of all Gendarmerie forces in the world”.2 This major’s personal opinion reflected a generally shared view of the status of the Gendarmerie, still perceived then as a perpetual hybrid between a military force and police force, an odd creature with an unclear raison d’être shared between wartime and peacetime. Another problem related to the involvement of the Serbian Gendarmerie in WWI was its ideological assessment. Communist Yugoslavia after WWII perceived the Gendarmerie as an instrument of repression in the hands of the “upper echelons of the Serbian bourgeoisie”—to use the Marxist terminology of the period. The Titoist military encyclopaedia, already mentioned, describes the Gendarmerie as “the armed unit used in a number of capitalist states to defend the regime, maintain public order and repress crime […] The Gendarmerie is a pillar of the system and a major instrument in its struggle against the working class […] and against all progressive movements in general”.3 This chapter intends to explore the organisation of the Serbian Gendarmerie corps and examine the true part it played during WWI. It also attempts to follow various phases of involvement in order to determine continuities and changes in the uncertain context of combat operations.

Traditions and Missions of the Serbian Gendarmerie, 1860–1914 After some 50 years of existence, the Serbian Gendarmerie was involved in the Great War from the very first day. Closely linked to the army, Gendarmerie forces had contributed to the building of the independent

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Serbian state in the nineteenth century. Early in 1860, while Serbia was still an autonomous principality under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, a žandarmska kompanija (Gendarmerie company) of 120 footmen and 15 horses was instituted by law to serve the municipality of Belgrade.4 This was initially a police force with a military structure intended to maintain law and order in the city and provide support to the so-called “expeditionary service” (the embryo of the armed forces). The company proved its worth 2 years later in 1862 when the Turks bombarded Belgrade, an event with lasting legacies in the public mind. The conflict ended with full Serbian control of the capital after the Turks were forced to evacuate the citadel. In memory of this heroic action, the first day of the bombardment (actually Duhovi, the 50th day after Easter in the Julian calendar still used by the Serbian Orthodox Church) became the official day of celebration for the Serbian Gendarmerie. However, it was only after Serbia’s independence, an outcome of the Congress of Berlin (1878), and proclamation of the kingdom (1882) that the Gendarmerie was instituted across the whole national territory by a law enacted on 23 June 1884.5 It was then defined as “an organ of State power for the maintenance of order, peace and security in the country; for the enforcement of police decisions; for the prosecution of offenders and for the surveillance of borders”. Having ascended the throne, King Milan Obrenović was in fact trying to bolster the authority of the state through a series of institutional reforms modelled on other major European countries. The driving force behind this law was Stojan Novaković,6 a philologist by training, Minister of the Interior from February 1884 to May 1885, future Prime Minister and later Serbia’s envoy to Constantinople, Paris and Saint Petersburg. Novaković intended to reform the Gendarmerie by introducing solutions already applied in Gendarmerie forces of France, Italy and Austria–Hungary.7 The law thus created a major tool in the service of central power in a country where nearly 90% of the population still lived in rural districts. A few months after it was passed, “Regulations on the structure, armament, dress, equipment, training and assignments of the Gendarmerie” were adopted, together with rules governing Gendarmerie service. Though organisational changes later intervened, the bulk of this 1884 legislation remained in place until the First World War. It provided the necessary arrangements to manage the dichotomy between the essentially military nature of the institution and the performance of assignments defined by civilian police authorities. The

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Gendarmerie corps was defined as belonging to the “permanent framework of the army”, hence there was direct military authority over internal matters, discipline, training, supplies and finance. Serbian gendarmes took the same oath of allegiance as all other servicemen and answered to the same rules of discipline and military justice. However, the maintenance of law and order and border control missions were entirely placed in the hands of civilian police authorities. Novaković and the government to which he belonged did not in fact draft this aspect of the law with special intent but only imported it from the legislative models of other European states which they often compiled. Many articles in the law were actually copied from French, Italian, Austro–Hungarian and Swiss legislation. The Serbian Gendarmerie was organised as follows: a specific Gendarmerie detachment of infantry and cavalry was stationed in Belgrade as well as in each of the 20 Okruzi (“circles”, that is, districts), with each detachment bearing the name of its district of residence. This structure did not create a powerful institution—in terms of numbers or armament. Numbers varied in accordance with the political party in power: the Progressive Party usually increased numbers while the Radical Party reduced them. By mid-1885, under a Progressive government, Serbian Gendarmerie numbered 1134 men, of whom 18 were commissioned officers, 929 infantry gendarmes and 205 cavalry gendarmes. After the 1887 general election, the Radical government brutally cut numbers to 478, plus a special battalion of about 500 men devoted to specific protection and repression assignments in Belgrade. After his accession in 1894, King Alexander Obrenović changed the 1884 legislation to reorganise the Gendarmerie, whose numbers were restored to 1000 men, with a tighter network of units in each district while the special battalion remained in the capital. These arrangements were left mostly untouched after the coup d’état of 1903 which brought King Peter I Karadjordjević to power. Far from properly staffed and essentially organised to perform internal peacetime maintenance of law and order, the Serbian Gendarmerie nevertheless took part in the Balkan Wars. Its wartime organisation and assignments were then entirely similar to those of the Austro–Hungarian Feldgendarmerie. Its missions were therefore to act as military police, couriers or escort units. About one third of Serbian gendarmes were enrolled in military units while those remaining were put in charge of mobilisation and the capture of deserters.

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Serbian victories during the Balkan Wars resulted in the liberation from Ottoman rule of Kosovo, Macedonia and the Sandjak of Novi Pazar. The Serbian Gendarmerie ensured the maintenance of law and order in these areas controlled by the army, pending the diplomatic resolution of the conflict. It later contributed to the integration of newly acquired territories. As early as the end of the First Balkan War, the Minister of War suggested to army high command a new organisation for Gendarmerie forces. After consultations with generals, the Minister created a Gendarmerie command in Skoplje (Uskub) for liberated areas. This command was placed under the authority of the Minister of the Interior who was to coordinate his decisions with military high command. The Gendarmerie was then divided into two battalions: one in the newly acquired territories, with its command in Skoplje, and the other in prewar Serbia, with its command in Belgrade where the overall Gendarmerie command was also based with infantry Colonel Janko Vukasović at its head. The 1st Gendarmerie Battalion numbered 1350 gendarmes posted in Belgrade as well as in the 17 Gendarmerie units across the various districts of pre-war Serbia.8 Under the authority of the 2nd Battalion, with its command in Skoplje, were 10 Gendarmerie units spread across the districts that had been liberated. In total, the Serbian Gendarmerie could rely on 3834 infantry gendarmes and 400 cavalry gendarmes. This was confirmed by legislation passed in November 1913 which thus completely overhauled the organisational model derived from the law of 1884.9 Security conditions under which the Gendarmerie operated in “Old Serbia” (Kosovo and the Sandjak of Novi Pazar) and “Southern Serbia” (Macedonia) were highly problematic. The wars had left a precarious situation: large landed estates had been plundered; the very diverse population, in both ethnic and religious terms, was incredibly reluctant to hand over its weapons; Austria–Hungary was inciting the Albanian population to rebel; pro-Bulgarian agitation was also strong and the refusal to acknowledge Serbian authority was translated into open violence in the Kavadarci and Djevdjelija districts.10 The recruitment of local gendarmes was therefore difficult and gendarmes coming from pre-war Serbia, owing to their ignorance of local customs and languages, were not very successful in maintaining security and imposing governmental authority.11 For particularly tough operations, the Gendarmerie even had to request army support.

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From Combat to Dismantling, 1914–1916 With the outbreak of WWI after the Austro-Hungarian attack on Serbia, Gendarmerie forces were still organised in accordance with the system adopted in the autumn of 1913. Building on the experience acquired during the Balkan Wars, and with a view to making the Gendarmerie more efficient, the Ministry of War suggested to military high command a change of service rules.12 The Ministry regretted that gendarmes during the Balkan Wars, though reputed to be the “most valuable and best paid among our military”, had actually been employed as “cooks or orderlies” while “disorder prevailed in the rear”. To remedy this state of affairs, the supreme military command chief of staff agreed to change three areas in the rules governing wartime Gendarmerie service.13 It was thus decided that during marches cavalry Gendarmes would ride at the front of columns to ensure security while their infantry colleagues would be positioned at the rear where their task would be to gather up laggards or soldiers having lost their way. Gendarmes would also be in charge of keeping order during a march, finding the best routes and arresting spies. The second change concerned Gendarmes posted to the general staff, where they would now be entrusted with the personal security of the commander-in-chief. Finally, before, during and after combat operations, gendarmes would be in charge of keeping order at the rear, controlling transits, arresting suspects, regrouping soldiers and providing support to the commanders of medical and sanitary units. On the day of the Austro-Hungarian attack against Serbia (28 July 1914), the Serbian Gendarmerie was put on a nationwide state of “strict vigilance”. However, and in line with existing legislation, Gendarmerie forces were not supposed to be engaged in combat as a separate corps within the army. Events decided otherwise and the gendarmes of the 1st Battalion in Belgrade, together with the Night Watch,14 positioned themselves on the front line along the banks of the Sava and Danube.15 In fact, Belgrade gendarmes had to replace 3rd class16 army privates, delayed by slow mobilisation procedures. The Gendarmerie was therefore involved in fighting from the very first day, opening fire on the Austro-Hungarian barges attempting to motor up the Sava from Semlin (Zemun). After several days on the front line, the 3rd class privates arrived and replaced gendarmes who then returned to Belgrade to perform their regular duties. In the bombarded capital, this essentially meant preventing plundering and—according to the general rule

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for any city under attack—Gendarmerie forces were supposed to protect citizens’ property until any retreat was ordered whereby they would be the very last ones to leave “right in front of enemy bayonets”, as the contemporary phrase described it. This happened in November 1914 when the Gendarmerie evacuated Belgrade only a few hours before Austro-Hungarian troops marched in. Gendarmes were then sent to the Kolubara River Front, to the south of the capital, where they provided reinforcements to the army at a decisive moment in the battle, which ended by mid-December with a Serbian victory and the retreat of the enemy outside of Serbian national territory. Gendarmes were therefore able to return to Belgrade and once again resume their normal activities as the first year of the campaign drew to a close. The enemy’s retreat and the liberation of national territory did not mean a return to peace for Serbian gendarmes. At the rear, and in areas acquired after the Balkan Wars in particular, they still had to arrest deserters and fugitives. Though planned by legislation, the integration of gendarmes into the army created coordination problems both in the front and at the rear. Moreover, numbers proved insufficient. Military authorities therefore tried to enrol ethnic Serbs and other “South Slavs” among prisoners of war from the ranks of the Austro-Hungarian Army— but soon had to drop the idea when it raised strong protests from Serbian gendarmes. The general staff then ordered gendarmes, integrated into operational troops in November 1914, to make themselves available to the Ministry of the Interior and later posted them at the disposal of the government having moved to Niš since July 1914.17 On 6 October 1915, during the new Austro-Hungarian offensive supported by German troops, gendarmes of the 1st Battalion again positioned themselves on the banks of the Sava and Danube and took an active part in the defence of the capital.18 The combined battalion they had joined numbered about 400 Belgrade gendarmes who engaged the 59th Austro-Hungarian division as soon as it landed at the foot of the Kalemegdan Fortress. The fighting lasted nearly 12 hours before they retreated towards the streets of central Belgrade. After another 3 days of combat, the Serbian Gendarmerie evacuated the capital for a second time, with 53 men injured and 40 dead. This was the hardest engagement they had fought during the war. From October–November 1915 onwards, gendarmes followed the retreat of the Royal Court, the government and of all military and civilian authorities towards the south, down to Kosovo, then across the

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mountains of Albania and Montenegro, and, via Skadar (Scutari), all the way to the Adriatic coast. During this epic evacuation—known in popular culture as the “Serbian Calvary”—the state of the Serbian army deteriorated, with several soldiers leaving their units. Going through Montenegro, six gendarmes actually deserted but most went on performing their duties, namely arresting fugitives.19 At the Albanian border, gendarmes still took care of Serbian Army recruits and did their best to orientate them on their way to the sea where the retreat was heading.20 In order to improve the organisation of this massive transfer and fight back against the attacks of Albanian bandits, some Serbian Army commanders tried to gather gendarmes scattered among various retreating units. This happened for instance on December 1915 at Elbasan in Albania where the commander of the Timok Army created a half-battalion of gendarmes. The same method was used by the general in command of troops in the new territories, and the 1st Army also integrated gendarmes from both the 1st and 2nd Battalions it had encountered on the way. The state of those makeshift Gendarmerie units was precarious. Gendarmes felt abandoned, their supplies were critically low and officers barely managed to keep order. Unit commanders had to carry out their obligations through those dramatic hours of debacle in spite of dire conditions. In Skadar, then in Drač (Durazzo), Gendarmerie command was even forced to change its quarters three times before being able to settle down and ensure security for the evacuation of the Serbian Army by French and Italian navies. Combats to slow down the advance of Austro-Hungarian troops towards the Adriatic coast where the evacuation was taking place forced gendarmes to move again to the front line in Albania. In early February 1916, a Gendarmerie regiment fought side by side with the Drina division in the area of Kroja-Heraj.21 This regiment, gathering 1st and 2nd Battalion gendarmes, fought with success and earned itself praise from military high command for its contribution to the protection of troops being evacuated from the Adriatic coast to Corfu and Bizerte. On 13 February 1916, after the evacuation of the greater part of the Serbian Army from the Albanian coast had been completed, the general staff decided to dismantle the Serbian Gendarmerie altogether. All gendarmes, except those belonging to the half-battalion of the Timok Army, still considered as a combat unit, were to be integrated into regular army troops. Once integrated into regiments, former gendarmes were given the task of standing guard at various headquarters and protecting

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supplies and monetary reserves. This dismantling of the Gendarmerie can be partly explained by the massive human and material losses suffered by the army as a result of its retreat: it simply needed men to fill its depleted ranks. The lack of money and equipment also played an important role. Indeed, one month before the dismantling, on a proposal from the Minister of Finance keen to make savings, all gendarmes had been classified in the same tax and salary bracket as regular servicemen who earned only modest wages—at any rate inferior to those of gendarmes. Still, those restrictive measures were then considered provisional.

The Rebirth of Gendarmerie Forces, 1916–1918 Having reached the Adriatic coast exhausted and decimated, Serbian troops were entirely dependent on the moral and material support of the Allies—mainly the French. Furthermore, the fate of the Gendarmerie was closely related to the restoration of the army itself. As early as March 1916, it was nevertheless recreated in Corfu and, like the rest of the Serbian Army, totally reorganised. The proposal for a new Gendarmerie structure came from the Minister of War who envisaged a sharing of Gendarmerie competence between the Ministry of the Interior and his own ministry.22 He suggested a decrease in the number of gendarmes from 4100 (numbers as of August 2015) to 633, that is, 116 cavalry gendarmes and 517 infantry gendarmes organised into a battalion. This reduction in numbers went hand in hand with a reduction in pay. Gendarmes still available were to be affected to regiments in accordance with their pre-war residence. The minister’s proposal was agreed by the government in March 1916 and became immediately enforceable. The planned structure was that of the pre-war Gendarmerie. The 1st Battalion was restored under the authority of the same officers as those posted in Belgrade in 1913. An overall Gendarmerie command was reinstated in Corfu, under the responsibility of the Ministry of the Interior, whereas general supplies depended on the Ministry of War. The Gendarmerie Battalion recruited the oldest gendarmes belonging to the 3rd class of the army or those who were too old for conscription.23 Among gendarmes that fulfilled such criteria, absolute priority was given to those who had been wounded. Gendarmes were to sign a commitment to stay on and serve in the corps for at least 2 years after the end of hostilities. In May 1916, when the first recreated Serbian troops arrived on the Salonika Front, an independent detachment of gendarmes

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was formed to accompany them. In the autumn of 1916, this new unit was integrated into the 1st Gendarmerie Battalion and took part, in November, in the restoration of the Serbian administration in Bitolj (Monastir), the only national territory to have been liberated. At this time, however, most gendarmes remained incorporated into combat units and the differences between their missions and those of soldiers remained insignificant. The end of 1916 brought a period of calm. Once Bitolj had been liberated, the front stabilised and hopes of a speedy return home faded. Tensions between gendarmes and soldiers intensified. Indeed, soldiers, sorely tested by combat and hardship, for some reason expressed their weariness by taking gendarmes to task for never having taken part in front line fighting. To defuse this animosity, troop commanders were instructed to inform soldiers of the fact that gendarmes, not incorporated within the troops, did not any have “easier tasks than combat duties”.24 This was to be illustrated with reminders of Gendarmerie activities in the “newly liberated territories” in 1914–1915. Early in 1917, as the front line situation remained stable, the 1st Gendarmerie Battalion recovered back to its original number. The general staff was also strongly implicated in Gendarmerie affairs. It took direct command of all Gendarmerie units and tried to eliminate disagreements by defining clear rules for their posting and disciplinary subordination,25 that all officers were under strict obligation to respect. Yet problems persisted owing to tensions between military high command and the civilian authorities that came to a head by the turn of the year. Defeat on the battlefield, hardships suffered during retreat, foreign exile and the uncertain prospect of returning home had indeed exacerbated resentment and bitterness among large numbers of officers; some went as far as questioning the decisions of military high command and Regent Alexander. At the head of this group was Colonel Dragutin Dimitrijević Apis who was eventually arrested, together with his supporters, between December 1916 and February 1917. At the ensuing trial in Salonika, Apis was convicted of high treason and an attempted coup. During this period of conflict between the civilian authorities and military commanders, the Gendarmerie remained a loyalist force and sided with Regent Alexander and the general staff. In June 1917, Apis was actually executed by a Gendarmerie detachment. As the war drew to a close, the 15 September 1918 breakthrough on the Salonika Front had immediate consequences for the Gendarmerie. As

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Serbian troops pushed northward, the Ministry of War ordered a withdrawal from the ranks of all gendarmes integrated into infantry regiments in order to return them to their peacetime duties as soon as their districts of origin, that is, those before the 1915 retreat, were liberated. The 2nd Gendarmerie Battalion, formerly stationed in Skoplje, was thus recreated only a short time after the breakthrough. In October 1918, the government formally reinstated the organisational model of 1915 on all Serbian territory and the 1884 legislation, with later amendments and additions, became enforceable again. Yet in the immediate aftermath of the war, only 10% of the circa 3000 gendarmes posted before the conflict had returned to their initial districts. This very low proportion can be explained both by wartime losses and the dispersion of troops following breakthrough. With the creation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, the Serbian Gendarmerie was again reformed and integrated into the structures of the new state. Its new organisation came into force as of 26 February 1919.



Notes 1. Radivoje Antić, “Žandarmerija”, in Vojna enciklopedija, Vol X, Beograd: Vojnoizdavacki Zavod, 1967, pp. 809–811. 2. Tel. I. Janković, “Naša žandarmerija u ratu (Our Gendarmerie at War)”, Policija, Nos. 11–12, June 1932, p. 599. 3. Radivoje Antić, “Žandarmerija”, pp. 809–810. 4. Dušan Alimpić, “Žandarmerija”, in Narodna enciklopedija srpsko-hrvatsko-slovenačka, Vol. I, Zagreb, 1925, pp. 724–730. 5. Glasnik srpskog učenog drustva, Vol LXI, No. 560, p. 121. 6. Mihailo Vojvodić, Stojan Novaković i Vladimir Karić, Beograd: Clio, Arhiv Srbije, 2003. 7. For a study of the legacy of the French Gendarmerie model, see ArnaudDominique Houte and Jean-Noël Luc (eds.), Les Gendarmeries dans le monde, de la Révolution française à nos jours, Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2016. 8. Žandarmerijski vesnik, No. 1, 1926, p. 10. 9. VA Vojni arhiv [Military Archives, hereinafter VA] Official Journal for the Year 1912, pp. 527–528. 10. VA, P-2, 15, 23/5. 11. Petar Stojanov, Makedonija za vreme balkanskih ratova, Beograd, 1980, p. 54.

180  S. SRETENOVIĆ 12. VA, P-3, 60, 5/1, Ministry of War Report Dated 28 July 1914. The Minister of War at the Time Was Colonel Dušan P. Stefanović. 13. VA, P-3, 60, 5/1, Ordinance from the General Staff of the Supreme Command Issued on August 3, 1914. 14. A special body of watchmen reporting to police and in charge of nighttime security. 15. Janković Tel. K., “Uloga žandarmerije u odbrani Beograda 1914– 1915 godine”, in Agonija Beograda u svetskom ratu, Beograd, 1931, pp. 249–266. 16.  Privates enlisted in the Serbian Army were divided into three classes (poziv) in accordance with their age and date of mobilisation. 17. VA, P-3, 60, 5/17, Order Issued by the Chief of the General Staff, 12 July 1915. 18. Janković Tel. K., “Uloga žandarmerije u odbrani Beograda 1914– 1915 godine”, in Agonija Beograda u svetskom ratu, Beograd, 1931, pp. 249–266. 19.  VA, P-9, 13, 44/1, Danube Division to Supreme Command, 26 November 1915. 20. Camille Ferri-Pisani, Le Drame serbe, octobre 1915-mars 1916, Paris, Perrin, 1916. 21. VA, P-6, 106, 42/2, Order from the 1st Army General Staff, 16 January 1916. 22. VA, P-3, 60, 5/55, Ministry of War Report, 8 March 1916. 23. VA, P-8, 12, Supreme Command to Combat Units, 6 May 1916. 24. VA, P-9, 179, 19/6, Ordinance from Supreme Command, 23 December 1916. 25. VA, P-8, 17, 6/1, General Staff of the Supreme Command, 27 January 1917.

PART III

Policing Far from the War? The Empires and the Neutrals

CHAPTER 13

The Swiss Police Forces and Counter-Intelligence (1914–1918) Christophe Vuilleumier

It is common knowledge that the Swiss Confederation remained neutral during the two world wars. Collective memory of the country thrown into the conflict of 1914 has preserved the image of a Switzerland that was a refuge, an idealised evocation with a clear link to the creation of the Red Cross in Geneva, to the accommodation of prisoners wounded on the front in makeshift hospitals and to the founding of the League of Nations. However, because of its geographical position and the borders it shared with belligerent countries, the Confederation pursued a policy of compromise, ready to assist on certain occasions while prone to accept inglorious realities like in the case of the Colonels.1 This policy of compromise allowed Switzerland to stay out of any military commitment, and to play, reluctantly, a special role. Its neutrality, and the relative ease with which one could cross the country, would be used to organise multiple intelligence operations for the duration of the war. Germany and France in particular would go

C. Vuilleumier (*)  Société suisse d’histoire, Berne, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_13

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on to profit from this “Helvetian Door”. Switzerland’s location in Europa and its borders vis-à-vis the battles in Alsace2 and the way the battles were progressing, and the development of the operating forces, as much as the possibility of rallying the two sides at the front lines, represented, moreover, a possibility for obtaining tactical information which was potentially essential for each side. Very quickly, these espionage activities became the main topic in Swiss news. More than 120 cases of espionage thus emerged via the press during the First World War, involving hundreds of people. It is estimated that as early as November 1916, the number of foreign spies expelled from Switzerland, as a result of a sentence or an administrative decision by the Federal Council, was more than 100.3 It is obviously not a question here of expanding upon the matter of espionage in Switzerland during the First World War, but of determining, within this framework, the role played by the police, or rather the cantonal police, as each canton was sovereign in these matters. The Swiss Confederation did not, at this stage, possess an intelligence service, let alone a counter-espionage service. The only intelligence operations carried out by the Swiss were thus limited to military reconnaissance carried out from time to time on the initiative of officers in charge of the surveillance of a border area. As far as counter-espionage was concerned, the police would, de facto, take charge of it. By 1914, the police already had a lot of experience dealing with anarchists and revolutionaries who, from the end of the nineteenth century onwards, had come in large numbers seeking refuge in Switzerland—their presence was tolerated. Memorable examples include Pierre Kropotkine, or the times Lenin stayed in the country. Although the authorities accepted the presence of political dissidents from various backgrounds, they remained no less attentive to their activities. These dissidents, while pacifist and intellectual most of the time, were nevertheless subversive. All the same, Switzerland would witness several criminal cases involving anarchists, such as the assassination of Elisabeth of Bavaria, Empress of Austria, on the quays in Geneva in 1898,4 or the workshops fabricating fake Russian identity papers on the Vaudois Riviera. In the two decades which preceded the First World War, the police would gather masses of important information on this population, its habits, its modus operandi via networks, its hiding places, its leaders, like Louis Bertoni, and its meeting places.5 The police would plant

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informants, keeping at least some anarchist activity under surveillance— some of whom would be exploited by German intelligence services. Also, the appearance of spies on the territory from the beginning of the war onwards, blending into illicit circles, would quickly be noticed, especially because, for these agents, intelligence activity in a neutral country was not fundamentally a matter of criminal activity, but fell within the framework of war activity that was not subject to the full force of the law. The idea was then, that espionage, if it were to remain discreet, was tolerated and did not need to be protected by specific measures in the face of a non-belligerent country. This was an idea that the Alsatian Reiser, who considered blowing up a strategic railway line in the Swiss area, and who had been arrested in Basel in 1915, was going to put forward in the court of cassation of the Federal Tribunal.6 This court, however, would consider that in this case, the law pertaining to explosives was not only applicable to anarchist crimes. It considered that the community of interests of peoples had played a determining role in the elaboration of this law, and that it was natural that it should apply to the protection of goods located abroad, especially as the neutrality of the country was at stake.7 The verdict was unambiguous and confirmed the criminal nature that espionage had in the eyes of the federal authorities, a verdict which shaped jurisprudence and thus strengthened the role played by the police.8 New intelligence activities would thus be neutralised by the police, who redoubled their efforts and succeeded in breaking up a German espionage network which was spread across the entire country and which included over 120 people.9 The forces of order, at that time, had a very rudimentary tool at their disposal, but one which was very useful within the framework of a confederation, that is, the Swiss Police Gazette.10 This was an instrument which allowed the cantonal police to exchange information on possible suspects, and which would, from 1915 onwards, contain the names of people suspected of espionage on behalf of a foreign power.11 Its effectiveness was illustrated in the Fritz Moser case. At the end of 1915, the military tribunal of the 3rd division, to which the civil police had handed over the case, took care of a case involving the recruitment of spies in Switzerland by foreign agents, and of Fritz Moser, who had followed up on the propositions made by the Nachrichtenofficiere in Lörrach, which was the headquarters of the German intelligence services covering operations carried out in Switzerland. Dispatched to France to

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gather intelligence on troop movements, Fritz Moser returned empty handed to Switzerland and was picked up by the police when he alighted from a train at Neuchâtel,12 after being identified during the course of the investigation into the recruiting affair, and subsequently registered in the Swiss Police Gazette. The cantonal police would, moreover, exchange information on methods used by foreign agents. The Geneva security police thus deciphered, at the end of 1915, the code used by a couple of spies in their letters. They established that “a tin of sardines” signified “an infantry regiment”, and the term “herring” signified “artillery”—food prices corresponded to the number of regiments. This information was corroborated by the Zurich and Basel police.13 The Swiss police would benefit especially from the secret war carried out between the German and French intelligence services, with the counter-espionage services of each side denouncing enemy agents to the Swiss authorities in order to neutralise them. These denunciations were all the easier to carry out as the Swiss population, contrary to the country itself, struggled to preserve political neutrality, with some oscillating in favour of Germany and Austria, and others leaning towards France. The police evidently did not escape these trends, sometimes displaying an exemplary zeal, or finding, on the contrary, the opportunity to make juicy profits by putting themselves on the payroll of one side or the other. One example of this is the police chief of the municipality of Herisau, who in 1916 was accused of smuggling food to Germany14 as well as spying for the French intelligence services.15 Espionage grew to such an extent in Switzerland that it filled the newspapers and spread suspicion within the population, consequently, reactions quickly followed. On 25 January 1916, a political committee put forward a bill to the Federal Council, aimed at interning foreign deserters in camps who were not domiciled in Switzerland before the war, as well as those found guilty of espionage in the courts.16 The Federal Council did not go down this road. But in February, it modified and added to the edict from 6 August 1914, concerning the penal provisions on the state of war and made regarding the intelligence services favouring of foreign powers. Article 5 of this edict specified that from that time on, anyone providing intelligence to a foreign power would be punished by imprisonment and a fine of up to 20,000 francs, and foreigners would be, moreover, expelled from the territory.

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Furthermore, the Federal Council would give the Federal Criminal Court the power to try intelligence cases in order to speed up procedures, except in cases where the author of such acts was a person under military jurisdiction, or when the crime of treason was added to the unlawful practice of providing intelligence. In these cases, military tribunals were brought in to investigate matters and to hand down judgements. Direction of the Criminal Investigation Department would, moreover, be transferred to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, and supported, as necessary, by the military police, according to instructions from army command. If the Swiss did not yet possess any counterintelligence service, the country had nonetheless just acquired a fairly improved power to respond, by modifying its administrative architecture. The Federal Council would still designate an extraordinary public prosecutor, and, for investigations, one or several extraordinary investigating magistrates. As for procedure, when an arrest took place for unlawful intelligence services, the person apprehended had to have his case heard immediately, or within twenty-four hours, and the statement made during interrogation had to be sent with the report to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office. As for the army’s chief of staff, he was obliged to transmit information received on unlawful intelligence services to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office. The decree of the Federal Council took effect on 15 March 1916.17 And yet, in spite of all these measures, espionage continued to grow even more over the year, with cases sufficiently numerous to keep two military investigating magistrates continually occupied.18 Activity in the court of criminal appeal became excessive, even more so after the decree of the Federal Council from 22 February 1916 onwards. In that year, 62 investigations would be opened by federal investigating magistrates, 53 of which concerned cases of espionage.19 One of these investigations led police to carry out a crackdown, hitherto unprecedented in Switzerland, arresting several Turkish officials accused of being at the head of a vast covert organisation in charge of informing Istanbul on the various political adversaries of the Sultan, who was residing in the country, notably Armenians, Syrians, Egyptians and Ottoman Greeks.20 The investigation allowed for the apprehension of Baroness von Waume, the wife of a German officer who was in service to the Turkish Army, as well as the wife of General Pasha de Strecker, in office in Istanbul. It also allowed those investigating to get their hands

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on documents of a compromising nature dealing with some Serbian officers. The extraordinary federal investigating magistrate ordered searches to be carried out in Geneva and Lausanne, at the homes of high-profile Turks. This led to arrests, notably at the home of Pasha Youssouf Saddik, former representative of the ex-Khedive of Egypt in Constantinople.21 This investigation witnessed collaboration on the ground between several cantonal police forces, jointly carrying out searches. Moreover, this police collaboration spilled across borders, since foreign countries also provided information to the Swiss police when they themselves might be concerned. Thus, the investigation into Paul Waldé, a Genevan, found guilty by the War Council in Paris in 1917, had allowed the French authorities to learn the name of the person behind him in Switzerland,22 an Austrian agent by the name of Raymond-Albert Svoboda, who was arrested not long afterwards in Zurich.23 The Swiss population, saturated by such cases, several of which were revealed as being particularly worrying, did not take long to express their discontent—the press covered this widely. Repeated exhortations did not change anything at first. The Federal Council would, all the same, enact an order which would take effect on 20 December 1917 that concerned the border police and checks on foreigners. The measure was only a partial response to the demands of the public and Federal Parliament, as well as of the cantons, which demanded more severity and uniform federal regulations on the question of foreigners. The order specifically stipulated that legitimisation documents of foreigners coming to Switzerland should bear a visa and that they were obliged to show that they had the means necessary to support themselves. Furthermore, foreigners had to declare the purpose of their visits. Upon their departure, foreigners had to present their legitimisation papers, bearing a stamp from the authorities representing the location of their final stay. The avowed objective of these measures was thus to prevent the continual comings-and-goings of smugglers and spies. This arsenal of measures thus formed the basis of a unified and modern immigration police for the whole country! These measures, however, did not prevent one of the most serious espionage cases of this period on Swiss territory. On 25 September 1918, while thousands of German soldiers surrendered to the Allied armies without fighting in Meuse and Argonne, and with the Flanders offensive that would begin 3 days later, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, on the basis of police reports, had an engineer named Hans Schreck arrested

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in Leissigen. Schreck’s “work” was to persuade, by any means possible, Germans who were long-term residents of Switzerland to enter into the service of their homeland.24 Elements of information in the course of the investigation led to the whereabouts of the engineer, at whose residence numerous documents were seized during his arrest. The suspicions of the Prosecutor’s Office were thus confirmed. The man who was supposed to be of importance to the German intelligence services was none other than the head of counter-intelligence in Switzerland. The documents the police had succeeded in getting a hold of allowed for the veil to be lifted on part of the German’s plans for Switzerland during 1918. Through these documents, it was learned that the Germans had intended to blow up munitions factories in the canton of Neuchâtel25 which supplied the French Army.26 Hans Schreck was, against all expectation, locked up within the walls of a cantonal hospital in Zurich, not a prison. It was obvious he would escape very easily. During the month of October, during a game of billiards, Hans Schreck left the medical institution and returned to Germany,27 helped by members of his organisation. This escape was very timely, since Zurich was holding a trial which was to both implicate him and deal with the terrorist activities organised by his accomplices. A secret depot which contained diabolical machines, grenades, bacilli, and war material originating from Germany was discovered in Zurich, at Nordstrasse, sometime beforehand,28 leading to the arrest, in November 1918, of Baron Kleist in his castle at Freudenberg by Lake Zug, where Margaret Thatcher would reside many times several decades later. An arrest was curiously made at the very moment that Kaiser Wilhelm II, a close friend of Baron Kleist, abdicated! It becomes clear, when reading about these police cases, that the vast majority of them were fomented by Germany. Germany, through its legation in Bern, its consulates and its politico-financial entities which were the Metallum and the Militaria, had developed espionage networks on Swiss soil, each of which was autonomous, by using either Germans established in Switzerland, consular employees or even confederates bought by the German cause. The net was tight and the intermediaries numerous. Coming from France, Italy and sometimes Switzerland, information travelled back across the country towards Germany. The intelligence bureau in Lörrach, which housed an espionage school where it is said that Mata Hari was trained,29 and which is mentioned in numerous cases, played an important role in organising missions,

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gathering information and transmitting it to army corps officers when it was a question of intelligence related to troop movements or the location of artillery. Sheltered on German soil, connected to other intelligence centres in the Empire,30 particularly well situated being on the border with Basel and near the front, the centre in Lörrach was thus a base of primary importance for German espionage. France also developed its intelligence services in the country by leaning as much on the Francophile sentiments of the population as on the use of money. Several networks were created in connection with the military attaché based in Bern, as well as with intelligence bureaus like the one in Annemasse. However, the activity developed in Switzerland by the French intelligence services never reached the level of intrigue carried out by the Germans,31 despite the fact that French espionage at that time, thanks to innovative methods, was modernising at a faster rate than the intelligence services of other states—notably through the use of radio and “night tables” used for aerial surveillance.32 It is perhaps this technology, considered at the time innovative, which allowed French spies to remain more discreet in Switzerland than their German and AustroHungarian counterparts, and to escape the Swiss forces of law and order more often. The First World War had, however, modified the face of the Swiss police, by increasing its interaction with the forces of law and order in different cantons. It had also led to a modernisation of its techniques, from the simple use of a common database, the Swiss Police Gazette, to the development of forensics teams, solicited more and more frequently. The forensics institute in Lausanne, created shortly before the war in 1909 by the photographer Rodolphe Archibald Reiss, and considered to be the first forensics police school in the world, thus intervened in the context of several espionage cases, giving opinions and expertise.33 Fires and explosions, crime scene investigations, identification, tool markings, microtraces, blood splatter patterns, paternity testing—all such activities were available. Doubtless the most important on offer by the institute was documentation expertise. This activity, moreover, welcomed prosecutors and police officers from Romania, Serbia, Greece, Luxemburg, Russia, Brazil and the United States, who came to train in Lausanne well before the war. With the war, the director, Archibald Reiss, was solicited by the Serbian government to visit in order to investigate the atrocities committed by the Austrian Army. Reiss left on 19 September 1914 and

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proceeded to use the methodology developed for criminal investigations during his inquiries in Serbia. He was able to demonstrate numerous and repeated acts of violence carried out by Austria and publicised his findings in the press and via his own lectures.

Conclusions This extraordinary role of counter-espionage, played by the forces of law and order between 1914 and 1918, would not, however, be paid tribute to by the Confederation, which, in light of the success of its police force, decided not to proceed with the establishment of an ad hoc intelligence service, preferring to preserve the approach which seemed to have proved successful during the conflict. The country would have to wait until the Second World War to witness the birth of a federal entity dealing with intelligence. The war had otherwise led Switzerland to establish the first immigration police, which was to prove dramatically effective 20 years later.34

Notes





1. This espionage case, the most famous in Switzerland during the First World War, involved two officers who were army chiefs of staff, the head of the intelligence services, Colonel Friedrich Moritz von Wattenwyl and his subaltern, Colonel Karl Egli, who, from the beginning of the conflict, sent daily bulletins from the chief of staff and diplomatic dispatches deciphered by the Swiss services to the military attachés of the Central Powers. 2. Hervé de Weck (ed.), Des deux côtés de la frontière: le Jura bernois, les régions françaises et alsaciennes avoisinantes pendant la Première Guerre Mondiale, Porrentruy: Société jurassienne des officiers suisses, 2012. 3. Christophe Vuilleumier, La Suisse face à l’espionnage, Geneva: Slatkine, 2015. 4.  This case encouraged international police cooperation, leading to the organization of the anti-anarchist conference in Rome that same year. Cf. Richard Jensen, The Battle Against Anarchist Terrorism: An International History, 1878–1934, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 5. Vivien Bouhey, Les anarchistes contre la République. Contribution à l’histoire des réseaux sous la Troisième République (1880–1914), Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2008. 6. La Gazette de Lausanne, 24 November 1915, p. 3.

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7. Ibid., 30 December 1914, p. 5. 8. Émile Thilo, La répression de l’espionnage en Suisse: Étude systématique des jugements rendus par la Cour pénale fédérale en 1916 et 1917, Lausanne: s.n., 1917. 9. La Gazette de Lausanne, 10/17 September 1915, pp. 2–3. 10. A descriptive compendium of suspects distributed to the cantonal police, year after year. 11.  La Gazette de Lausanne, 6 November 1915, p. 2. 12. Ibid., 15 October 1915, p. 1. 13. Ibid., 17 November 1915, p. 2. 14. Ibid., 25 October 1916, p. 1. On the importance of this issue, see the works by Wolfgang U. Eckart on the question of food in Germany during the First World War. Ein deutscher Hunger/Ohne Nahrungsreserven in einen vermeintlich kurzen Krieg. 15.  La Gazette de Lausanne, 19 July 1917, p. 2. 16. Ibid., 25 January 1916, p. 2. 17. Ibid., 23 February 1916, p. 3. 18. Ibid., 18 September 1915, p. 1. See Émile Thilo, La répression de l’espionnage en Suisse: Étude systématique des jugements rendus par la Cour pénale fédérale en 1916 et 1917, Lausanne, 1917. 19. Federal Archives of Switzerland, Rapport de la commission du Conseil des États sur la gestion du Conseil fédéral et du Tribunal fédéral en 1916. 29 mai 1917, No. 10081309, p. 313. 20.  See, on this matter, Dimitrakis Panagiotis, Military Intelligence in Cyprus: From the Great War to Middle East Crises, London: International Library of War Studies, 2010; Hans-Lukas Kieser, “Die türkische Nationalbewegung in der Schweiz 1911–1923”, Revue suisse d’histoire, No. 52, 2002, pp. 321–340. 21. Christophe Vuilleumier, La Suisse face à l’espionnage. 22. La Gazette de Lausanne, 29 April 1917, p. 4. 23. Ibid., 18 June 1917, p. 2. 24.  Ibid., 17 October 1918, p. 1. Federal Archives of Switzerland, Bekanntmachungen von Departementen und andern Verwaltungsstellen des Bundes, pp. 93–94. 25. France, in constant need of munitions, obtained its supplies from various foreign suppliers. Senate Archives of France, Commission de l’armée, Les rapports sur les projectiles, Série 69 S, Paris. 26.  Christophe Vuilleumier, “Les munitionnaires suisses de la Grande Guerre”, Revue administrative, No. 393, 2013, pp. 236–239. Marc Perrenoud, “L’évolution industrielle de 1914 à nos jours”, in Histoire du Pays de Neuchâtel, Vol. 3, Hauterive: Attinger, 1993, p. 147. Marc Perrenoud, “Un rabbin dans la cité, Jules Wolff, l’antisémitisme et

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l’intégration des Juifs à la Chaux-de-fonds (1888–1928)”, Musée neuchâtelois, No. 1, Neuchâtel, 1989, pp. 13–51. 27.  Federal Archives of Switzerland, Schreck Hans, 1880, E4320B #1990/133 #2123. 28. La Gazette de Lausanne, 29 October 1918, p. 2. 29. Fred Kupferman, Mata Hari: songes et mensonges, Brussels: Cartouche, 2005, p. 68. 30. Notably Freibourg im Breisgau and Anvers. 31. See, on this matter, L. Lacaze (translation form German), L’espionnage et le contre-espionnage pendant la guerre mondiale d’après les archives militaires du Reich, Paris: Payot 1934. 32. Bruno Fuligni and Jean-Baptiste Bourrat (eds.), Dans les archives inédites des services secrets: un siècle d’espionnage français (1870–1989), Paris: L’Iconoclaste, 2011. 33. Nicolas Quinche, Sur les traces du crime, De la naissance du regard indicial à l’institutionnalisation de la police scientifique et technique en Suisse et en France. L’essor de l’institut de police scientifique de l’Université de Lausanne, Lausanne: Slatkine, 2011. 34. Christian Rossé, Guerre secrète en Suisse 1939–1945, Paris: Nouveau Monde, 2015.

CHAPTER 14

The Swiss Army Gendarmerie: A Composite Force Facing the Challenges of the First World War Philippe Hebeisen

Owing to the federal nature of the Swiss Confederation, Switzerland’s policing landscape was always highly complex—with each canton eager to defend each of its prerogatives, including those related to the use of public force.1 The creation of any policing institution operating on a federal level—not to mention the creation of an actual “federal police”—has long represented a major challenge. Before 1935, the creation of such a force under the name of the Service de recherches judiciaires et de renseignement pour le maintien de la sûreté intérieure et extérieure (Judicial Investigation and Intelligence Service for the Maintenance of Internal and External Security), placed under the authority of the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland,2 would have been unthinkable. The Swiss Army’s Gendarmerie corps, which may be considered to some extent as a prototype for such a federal police force, remains one of

P. Hebeisen (*)  University of Neuchâtel, Neuchâtel, Switzerland Sorbonne University, Paris, France © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_14

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the least well-known components in this complex policing landscape.3 Aiming to profile it, this chapter will examine its development from 1882 to 1918 and in the immediate aftermath of the war when its lasting presence came to be finally accepted across the Confederation.

Early Stages in the Creation of an “Army Police” (1882–1914) Before 1882, the on-field policing of the army was entrusted to regular soldiers or a corps of “guides” (cavalry scouts). Colonel de Mandrot’s early suggestion in 1878 was to create a Gendarmerie force made up of officers taken from cantonal Gendarmerie units—individual state police forces—and mobilized if needed to replace non-commissioned officers (NCOs), soldiers or guides for policing duties during drill classes, recall periods or manoeuvres.4 His idea initially failed to convince but was taken up 4 years later. In fact, Colonel de Mandrot’s article already outlined what was implemented from 1882 onwards: a gathering of gendarmes from various cantonal police units to set up a force in charge of policing troops during military exercises. Regarding the 2nd Division, for instance, staff would be drawn from the cantonal units of Bern, Neuchâtel and Fribourg and obey service orders from the Département Militaire Fédéral (DMF)5 or the army itself. De Mandrot’s article also defended the idea that military police duties were to be reserved for specifically trained personnel and that calling on cantonal officers was logically a better option than granting exemptions from standard service to regulars—which was then the case. The year 1882 therefore saw the creation by the DMF—in time for the 6th Division’s manoeuvres in the canton of Thurgau—of a field Gendarmerie.6 This force was composed of gendarmes serving in their cantonal police uniforms (from Zurich in this instance) and posted to supervise troops as they exercised. It was placed under the command of another non-army officer, Lieutenant Fischer from the Zurich cantonal police: the first de facto commander of the Swiss Army’s Gendarmerie.7 For the first time indeed, a specific force in charge of policing was thus created to assist the army as a Gendarmerie corps in charge of “general policing of the area of immediate military presence, control of goods sold to soldiers, morality police, inspection of cantonments and bivouacs after departures, searches for lost items, etc.”.8 Yet this extensive list of tasks came only after the event since the original regulations actually

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failed to define them. This did not prevent the new Feldgendarmen (literally “field gendarmes”) from acting with tactful intervention, praised from the outset by the military press9 and quickly earning them support—though still anonymous—from within the army.10 This experiment in the occasional recruitment of gendarmes from cantonal police forces for the army’s yearly manoeuvres was therefore renewed several times.11 The idea of creating a more permanent “field Gendarmerie” even gradually acquired momentum within the army, as witnessed in an unsigned article published in 1890 calling for the creation of a fullfledged Heeresgendarmerie (army Gendarmerie) belonging to the army institution.12 Field Gendarmerie instructions for the manoeuvres of 1895 were quite innovative13 and marked a decisive step towards the institutionalisation of the new force, which was now entrusted with the supervision of all areas of military presence, including those at the rear. These instructions also provided a new list of tasks: general policing, maintenance of law and order, policing of foreigners, morality police and enforcement of public health regulations. The use of field gendarmes was now well established, though the use of guides did not altogether disappear until at least 1895.14 Another important step towards institutional integration was taken in 1902. The federal authorities introduced a bill for the organisation of a field Gendarmerie service.15 This attempt partly failed since both houses of the Federal Assembly ultimately decided to shelve the project promoted by the government and the DMF; yet there was no radical opposition and even the military considered the matter was only postponed and would be later accepted as part of a general overhaul of the army— which turned out to be true with the new law of 1907 governing military organisation (OM).16 This legislation integrated the new force as part of the army’s auxiliary services.17 The existence and sheer necessity of the field Gendarmerie as an ad hoc force was no longer called into question: “once again, the necessity of forming a distinctive Gendarmerie corps has been made obvious”.18 Finally, in 1912, the Federal Council approved a new set of “Instructions for field service” whose section 13 entitled Heerespolizei (army police) contained one of the two major innovations being introduced compared with the previous instructions approved in 1904: it attributed the exclusive assignment of provosts to the new force.19

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Through 30 years of development, the field Gendarmerie had thus managed to assert itself. However, two notable deficiencies remained when the First World War broke out: first, the remarkable absence of any specific organisational legislation; second, the absence of a clear and final terminology. The most current designation before the war was still that of Feldgendarmerie (field Gendarmerie) rather than Heerespolizei (army police), a revealing preference contradicting the new attribution of provost duties. Even the army’s official publication, the Journal Militaire Suisse, at that time under the editorship of Ulrich Wille, a future commander-in-chief,20 did not begin to use the second name until 1912.

The Ordeal of the Great War During the First World War, 300 policemen drawn from civilian police forces and supported by non-professional volunteers were put at the disposal of the army’s general staff to ensure the general policing of troops and to reinforce border controls. All of them were given a specific Army Gendarmerie uniform and appropriate equipment.21

This summary description of the part played by the army’s Gendarmerie force during the 4 years of the conflict ought to be strongly nuanced or even contradicted. Until recently, researchers knew that as early as 1915, the army was ordered to carry out public order maintenance missions intended to preserve internal peace and security22—the most well-known episode being its mobilisation to repress the general strike of November 1918. Yet little is known in this context about the growing importance acquired by army gendarmes within the overall Swiss military and policing systems—this is what we must explore. Organisation and Assignments of the Army Gendarmerie When the general mobilisation of 450,000 men was decreed on August 1st 1914, Switzerland’s national day, the Federal Assembly had not yet passed any legislation governing the organisation of the field Gendarmerie (the designation still employed in General Ulrich Wille’s report), though this was mandated by the law on military organisation of 1907.23 It was therefore in haste and using its plenary powers that the Federal Council issued the first regulations specific to the Army Gendarmerie (August 5th 1914), the founding text for the

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institution.24 For the most part, it remained unchanged and enforceable until November 15th 1918. A possible influence on this ordinance was the report on “the Swiss field Gendarmerie” presented during a general meeting of cantonal police commissioners in 1909,25 but blatant differences between the two texts seem to exclude any direct filiation. Originally, the new force was therefore a military corps officially designated as “the Gendarmerie of the army”. Its commissioned officers were mounted (providing their own horses) and its attributions were defined as follows: General policing, i.e. criminal investigations subject to military justice; Security and intelligence policing (‘Sûreté’), i.e. surveillance of spies, marauders, thieves, pickpockets and other adventurers; policing of roads during army marches; maintenance of law and order on the battlefield and in the rear; Morality police and policing of foreigners, i.e. surveillance of all individuals – male or female – following the troops; Sanitary policing, i.e. enforcing public health regulations in cantonments or rented accommodations (incl. inns), control of food quality and surveillance of merchants supplying the troops.26

The new force reported directly to the general staff of the army. It was specified that gendarmes and their NCOs were allowed to use bicycles to perform their duties. For the whole duration of the conflict, LieutenantColonel (later Colonel) Jost, commissioner of the Bernese cantonal police, assumed command of the Army Gendarmerie, taking his orders from the adjutant of the general staff. The fact that this policeman was so easily appointed at the head of the force derives from the Swiss militia tradition whereby every citizen is under permanent obligation to perform military service and therefore potentially a soldier at all times; it may also underline the absence of any identity rift between the army and its Gendarmerie. However, as early as the autumn of 1914, new assignments were added to the original list of tasks: border controls and “policing of foreign intelligence activities against neutrality”. As the chief of staff noted in his report: “This was their very first involvement with border controls”.27 From September 1915 onwards, border surveillance became such a major issue that staff had to be largely increased (see next section Staff numbers) and the Army Gendarmerie nearly transformed itself into a force of passport

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checking agents.28 In this respect, the real “first” mentioned in General Wille’s report was the extension of their authority to all civilians. However, this extension of army prerogatives created conflicts with cantonal police forces, notwithstanding the fact that army gendarmes were actually taken from their ranks; cantonal policemen took a dim view of the inroads of a military force into fields, which under normal peacetime circumstances were exclusively theirs, for example, the policing of roads, the policing of hotels and even counter-intelligence. Though complaints made against the activities of army gendarmes were mostly unfounded, a decree of the Federal Council enacted at the beginning of 1916 restricted the scope of Gendarmerie interventions to policing duties in the service of troops. Nevertheless, and though only the Office of the Public Prosecutor of the Confederation enjoyed special prerogatives in the field of counter-intelligence,29 the same decree allowed army gendarmes, subject to the approval of cantonal authorities, to “cooperate” with border control activities.30 This made sure the restrictive decree remained devoid of real effect: far from regressing, Gendarmerie involvement grew even further in the same year, as its presence was gradually extended to all borders of Switzerland until, by 1917, border controls had become the force’s main assignment. In theory, the respective duties of gendarmes, soldiers and customs officers were clearly defined by instructions issued on January 26th 1917.31 Yet previous extensions (November 1916) had been granted to gendarmes to allow them to carry out policing missions outside of military presence areas, with or without requests from civilian authorities.32 By 1918, this uninterrupted growth in staff numbers and intensified use of gendarmes required a clarification of the position of the force within the army itself. Hitherto obeying orders from the adjutant of the general staff, the Army Gendarmerie became a new section of the General Staff Service in its own right, a position more in line with the reality of its assignments. All the previous innovations were summarized and confirmed by the ordinance dated November 15th 1918 governing its organization; this text removed the maximum limit for staff numbers and codified procedures in terms of recruitment, pay, service duties, missions, etc.33 Although one paragraph reminds us that “the Gendarmerie of the army is in charge of military policing duties in the service of troops”, it must be underlined that the ordinance also grants the force, though still subject to civilian authority approval, extensive competence in the field of border surveillance and controls for tasks to be carried out “either

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independently or in cooperation with other military or civilian bodies”.34 The Army Gendarmerie was therefore still very much in charge of border controls in 1919 and in his 1920 report, the chief of staff rightly noted that “this army corps must be the last one to be demobilized, since, in the absence of any federal police force, any effective control of our borders cannot be achieved without them”.35 Although theoretically defined, Gendarmerie assignments had thus come to derive from de facto practices, with legal norms providing only later confirmation. Staff Numbers On August 18th 1914, 262 men recruited exclusively among “professional policemen from cantons and municipalities”36 were distributed among the various general staffs. Compared with 220,000 mobilised men,37 these army gendarmes represented only 0.12% of total army personnel. Yet after a partial demobilisation in the autumn of 1914, and owing to cantons and municipalities clamouring for their mobilised gendarmes to be returned, “the mobile Gendarmerie corps of the army”38 was reduced to 70 men on October 19th; this return of most gendarmes to their original police units meant numbers still available quickly proved insufficient in view of their assignments having, in the meantime, been extended to border control and counter-intelligence. In September 1915, border surveillance in several districts (Neufchâtel, Jura and Aargau) required a new increase and staff numbers went up again to circa 260 men. During the same year, other border districts were entrusted to the Army Gendarmerie—to the north (Schaffhausen) and the east (St. Gallen Rhine Valley). Staff requirements became so important that standard recruitment from police units proved impossible without risking their disorganisation via excessive levies. The army therefore started recruiting volunteers from its own ranks and “training them in makeshift conditions for policing duties”,39 representing a major departure from the initial spirit of all federal military legislation enacted since the beginning of the twentieth century. The Army Gendarmerie was thus authorized to recruit a maximum of 250 volunteers in 1916, 400 in 1917 and 1000 in 1918. By mid-April 1919, it still counted 35 commissioned officers and more than 1000 NCOs and gendarmes on duty. In terms of both absolute numbers and percentage proportions, the rise was therefore spectacular compared with the situation as it stood at the time of general mobilisation. With 12,500 army

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regulars still on duty when the war ended, gendarmes now represented 8% of total personnel. For a country numbering 3.9 million inhabitants in 1914, this new army corps had gained real significance. Beyond army regulars, 1918 also saw the extension of recruitment to men under the obligation to perform complementary service.40 Later repeated in 1939, this measure is an undeniable legacy from the First World War.41 Finally, one last significant change took place during the conflict: contrary to standard practice at the beginning, commissioned officers at the end of hostilities were no longer recruited from cantonal police units but from the army itself; this was probably intended to appease cantonal authorities who resented most the absence of superiors from their respective police forces. Uniforms and Weaponry Close on 300 policemen in their cantonal uniforms—“as varied as can be”42—were called up at the beginning of August 1914 and gathered in the Berne barracks. As a sign of recognition, they were given a green armband with a white “P” in the middle (P for polizei), to be worn on the left arm.43 Although this description from a 1975 article on the subject bears no relation to the real 1914 armband, the fact remains that the variety of uniforms created confusion in the army for some time. Indeed, the ordinance governing the organisation of the Army Gendarmerie had been hastily drafted in August 1914; it did mention (Art. 9) that: commissioned officers, non-commissioned officers and soldiers of the Army Gendarmerie corps shall enter service with the weaponry, equipment, apparel and rank insignia of the civilian police units to which they belong […] the Confederation shall provide them with a white armband as their special distinctive badge.44

Since this armband could easily be confused with that of the Red Cross, it was quickly replaced by the Confederation’s standard red armband with a white cross.45 Yet this was only a very minor improvement and the use of uniforms from various cantons and municipalities—29 different shapes and colours—soon proved to be the source of much confusion with uniforms of various belligerent countries. For the Gendarmerie Army’s commander-in-chief, this motley appearance was preposterous:

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Despite his armband, the army gendarme in his police uniform is perceived by troops as a foreign element to be looked at with suspicion. Their natural inclination is to imagine that the army’s Gendarmerie is used to sneak and spy on them […]. We must make every effort to counter this notion that an army gendarme is not a real soldier but only a drafted policeman. It is therefore vital that Gendarmerie uniforms should also play a part in convincing the army that gendarmes are indeed – first and foremost – soldiers. Only their service duties are special – just as standing guard or going on patrol are special tasks […]. This is how gendarmes originally from the cantonal police units of Valais – whose uniforms are very similar to those of French artillery units – were recently arrested several times in the [Swiss] Jura and had a hard time convincing our patrols and border guards that they did belong to the Swiss army. Likewise, barring a few details, the uniforms of Geneva gendarmes look every inch like those of French gendarmes, etc.46

This concern regarding the apparel and weaponry of provosts (there was hesitation in terms of supplying them with regulation carbines, that were unwieldy when riding bicycles, or pistols) was raised as early as November 1914 by the commander-in-chief of the Army Gendarmerie, who was very much aware of the problem. In order to streamline the uniform, weaponry and equipment of officers, NCOs and regular gendarmes, the head of the DMF’s war technical supplies division suggested clothing them under the uniform of infantry fusiliers and adding special insignia, such apparel being available at the time from all cantonal arsenals. The other option, that is, fitting the 8 commissioned officers and 260 NCOs and regulars with their own special uniforms was considered far too costly. As early as January 1915, wearing of the grey–green uniform of fusiliers, also the uniform of elite troops,47 was therefore adopted on principle, then confirmed in November 1916 by a Federal Council decree,48 which approved this infantry apparel and the addition of an armband for all army gendarmes whatever their cantonal or municipal unit of origin. Furthermore, Army Gendarmerie men were to be supplied with a rucksack, a belt with a sword bayonet and an ordnance revolver. This type of weaponry only allowed for short-range interventions, since long sabres had been considered impractical for running pursuits or patrols on bicycle. However, truly distinctive apparel had to wait until 1939 when army gendarmes were finally granted their own special uniforms.49 Given the mountainous landscape of most Swiss border areas, patrolling on bicycle also required them to be in excellent physical condition.

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Conclusions Following the Armistice of November 11th 1918, the demobilisation of Swiss troops was only partial, the state of active service was only finally lifted on October 1st 1920. In a troubled social context, fearing action from revolutionary movements, a mass influx of refugees and the likely surge of outbound contraband activities, federal authorities decided to maintain heightened surveillance of all border areas. Yet paradoxically, this task was now entrusted to special units made up of volunteers! The internal situation of the country was precarious, and this led to keeping or even recalling certain units to perform active duty. In late October 1918, the high command of the army requested the creation of a “corps of volunteers to perform border service and surveillance” (Freiwilligenkorps für Grenz- und Bewachungsdienst), arguing that the army was competent only for war and not for such tasks—another paradoxical assertion given the wartime use of the Army Gendarmerie but highly revealing of what the upper echelons of the military really thought about this Gendarmerie. The Federal Council eventually provided the necessary legal base for the creation of this “volunteer corps” in January 1919.50 Given the level of unemployment affecting Switzerland at the time, this was an immediate success, with 2374 men having already joined by the end of 1918. In late August 1919, the volunteer corps reached its peak with 5756 enlisted men. The Army Gendarmerie— itself increased to 1000 men by a Federal Council decision dated November 15th 191851—was then integrated into the volunteer corps in August 1919,52 with its last members demobilised in November 1920. As the state of active service was finally lifted, the Army Gendarmerie still formed the 8th section of the General Staff Service under the orders of the general chief of staff. Yet the service was reorganized in 1920 and the Army Gendarmerie was disbanded.53 The OT (organisation des troupes) regulations of 1924 closed the post-war cycle of reorganisation54 and merely authorized the Federal Council to undertake the creation of a number of specific forces if needed, including the Army Gendarmerie.55 A final decree thus confirmed what had only been created as a result of an emergency decree derived from plenary powers granted to the Federal Council.56 The ordinance dated November 15th 1918 remained the only organisational reference text, pertaining to the Army Gendarmerie, to be enacted until the Second World War. No peacetime legislation concerning it was ever introduced.

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Through 30 years of an existence that can be divided into three phases of tolerance (1882–1891), integration (1891–1907) and legalisation (from 1907 onwards), the Army Gendarmerie, created even before the war, established itself and was never questioned again.57 Even though its role was at first limited to provost duties, the new corps was, from the outset, formally and legally integrated into the army since the military organisation ordinance of 1907 mentions it as one of its auxiliary services and therefore a full-fledged member of the institution. To some extent, it may rightly be construed as the first federal police force, or at least as the first “all-purposes” force in the service of the Confederation outside the army itself—a significant innovation in Switzerland. During the First World War, as confessed by the army’s chief of staff, “the Army Gendarmerie was organised in such a way that it could – beyond its other standard assignments – somehow remedy the absence of a federal civilian police force”—thereby stirring jealous or angry feelings from civilian police forces.58 Therein lies probably one of the reasons for its rapid disappearance or return to abeyance after the war, Swiss citizens still refusing to accept the creation of a federal police with large numbers.59 In the field of “cultural exchanges”60 between forces, one may also surmise that the Army Gendarmerie was responsible for forms of convergence or reciprocal influence contributing to the future shaping of the Swiss policing model.61 In this respect, exchanges between police officers drafted together into the force must have greatly supplemented the regular meetings of the commissioners of cantonal police services held since 1902 within the framework of the CCPCS (Conférence des commandants des polices cantonales de Suisse), itself formalising previous forms of regular exchanges.62

Notes

1.  For an overall summary on the Swiss policing context, see Philippe Hebeisen, “Les gendarmeries suisses dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle. Un modèle helvétique autoréférencé?”, in Arnaud-Dominique Houte and Jean-Noël Luc (eds.), Les gendarmeries dans le monde, de la Révolution française à nos jours, Paris: Presses de l’université Paris-Sorbonne, 2016, pp. 121–130, and “Vers un profil commun? Recrutement et carrières des commandants cantonaux de gendarmerie au prisme de la prosopographie (Suisse romande, 1848–1914)”, Itinera, No. 32, 2012, Le ‘Made in Switzerland’: mythes, fonctions et réalités = ‘Made in Switzerland’: Mythen, Funktionen, Realitäten, pp. 159–175.

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2.  Therese Steffen Gerber and Martin Keller, “Police fédérale” entry in Dictionnaire historique de la Suisse (DHS), version as of 13 January 2010 (translated from German), http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/f/ F17246.php (19 February 2019). 3.  Limited sketches are nevertheless available in André Rochat, “Gendarmerie de l’Armée. Rétrospective historique 1882–1946”, P-Bulletin, No. 3, September 1975, pp. 7–20, and Dimitry Queloz, “Police de l’armée” in Rudolf Jaun and Sacha Zala (eds.), Inventaire des fonds relatifs à l’histoire militaire suisse, 1848–2000, Vol 3: Inventaire thématique des fonds des Archives fédérales, Berne, 2006, pp. 333–334. 4.  A. de Mandrot (general staff colonel), “Projekt, die Landjäger (oder Gensdarmerie) in die eidg. Armee einzureihen”, Journal militaire suisse [hereinafter JMS], No. 23, 1878, pp. 178–180. 5. The Département Militaire Fédéral (DMF) was Switzerland’s equivalent to a Ministry of Defence. 6. Its exact name was Feldpolizei and regulations specified that men serving in this corps were to be served “ein anständiges Glas Wein” [sic], meaning a decent glass of wine—not the cheap sort encouraging disruptions. See “Divisionzusammenzug VI.”, JSM, Vol. 28, No. 45, pp. 363–366, esp. p. 363. 7.  André Rochat, “La Gendarmerie de l’armée centenaire”, P-Bulletin, No. 3, November 1984, p. 12. 8. Id. 9.  “Divisionszusammenzug VI. (Schluss)”, JMS, Vol. 28, No. 51, 1882, pp. 411–413. 10. “Ueber Rekrutierung und Verwendung unserer Reiterei”, JMS, Vol. 29, No. 1, 1883, pp. 4–6. 11.  André Rochat, “Gendarmerie de l’Armée. Rétrospective historique 1882–1946”, p. 7; JMS, Vol. 37, No. 36, 5 September 1891, pp. 288– 289; JMS, Vol. 37, No. 40, 3 October 1891, pp. 321–322, and “Zur Richtigstellung der Angaben über die Feldgendarmerie-Abtheilung bei dem Truppenzusammenzug”, JMS, Vol. 37, No. 43, 24 October 1891, p. 348. 12.  “Ist Errichtung einer Feldgendarmerie nothwendig?”, JMS, Vol. 36, No. 10, 8 May 1890, pp. 89–90. 13. “Ordre de Corps d’armée n° 3”, Revue militaire suisse, Vol. 40, No. 9, 1895, pp. 514–516, and JMS, Vol. 41, No. 35, 1895, p. 286. 14.  JMS, Vol. 40, No. 39, 1894, p. 314, and P. Ceresole (commander of the 1st Army Corps), “Manœuvres du 1er corps d’armée”, RMS, Vol. 40, No. 7, 1895, pp. 418–425. 15. “Message du Conseil fédéral à l’Assemblée fédérale concernant la modification de l’article 2 de l’organisation militaire du 13 novembre 1874 (exemption de service des officiers et des hommes des corps de police

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cantonaux) en vue de l’organisation du service de la gendarmerie de campagne dans l’armée fédérale” (30 May 1902), Feuille fédérale, Vol. 3, No. 23, 1902, pp. 528–534. 16. The Organisation militaire (OM) is a federal law governing the organisation of the army. The OT (organisation des troupes) is the corresponding set of regulations with the legal force of a ministerial order. 17.  “Organisation militaire de la Confédération Suisse” (12 April 1907), Recueil officiel des lois et ordonnances de la Confédération suisse, nouvelle série (hereinafter RO n.s.), 23, 1908, pp. 695–755, esp. Art. 38, Art. 62 and Art. 13, paragraph 4, which provide service exemptions for—among others—“[…] agents of organized police corps subject to the dispositions set out in Article 62”. This article stipulated that “The Federal Assembly shall organize a field Gendarmerie composed of agents drawn from existing police units and entrusted with the policing of troops”. However, all applicable legal references did not as yet include the army’s Gendarmerie force; it is, for instance, absent from the OT regulations of 1911, see “Arrêté sur l’organisation des troupes” (6 April 1911), RO n.s., 27, 1912, p. 601 sq. 18.  RMS, Vol. 49, No. 4, 1904, p. 310. 19.  JMS, Vol. 58, No. 35, 31 August 1912, pp. 277–280; Colonel F. Feyler, “Une nouvelle instruction sur le service en campagne”, RMS, Vol. 57, No. 6, 1912, pp. 487–496, and “Une nouvelle instruction sur le service en campagne [fin]”, RMS, Vol. 57, No. 8, 1912, pp. 645–651. 20. Arthur Fonjallaz and Colonel F. Feyler, “A propos des grandes manœuvres”, RMS, Vol. 69, No. 8, August 1924, p. 337. 21. Lieutenant-Colonel Pierre Jordan, “De la gendarmerie de campagne de 1882 à la police militaire de 1995”, RMS, Vol. 139, No. 12, 1994, p. 16. The exact same text can be found in “Heerespolizeidienst”, P-Bulletin, No. 3, December 1994, p. 4. 22. Hans Rapold, Zeit der Bewährung?: die Epoche um den Ersten Weltkrieg: 1907–1924, Basel; Frankfurt am Main: Helbing & Lichtenhahn, 1988, pp. 253–277; Pälvi Conca-Pulli, Soldats au service de l’ordre public: la politique du maintien de l’ordre intérieur au moyen de l’armée en Suisse entre 1914 et 1949, MA thesis (Université de Neuchâtel), 2003. 23. “Rapport adressé au général par le chef d’état-major général sur la mobilisation et sur le service actif de 1914 à 1918” in Rapport du général U. Wille à l’Assemblée fédérale, sur le service actif de 1914 à 1918, translation ordered by the Federal Military Department, 1920, p. 80 sq., esp. its section entitled “Gendarmerie de l’armée”, pp. 331–334. See also Note 17. 24. Ordonnance concernant l’organisation de la gendarmerie de l’armée (5 August 1914), RO n.s., 30, 1915, pp. 361–369. 25. Fritz Egger, Die Schweizer Feldgendarmerie: einige Worte zum Traktandum Feldgendarmerie der tit. Polizeikommandantenkonferenz in Bern vom 14.-16. Oktober 1909, Solothurn: Vogt & Schild, 1909.

208  P. HEBEISEN 26.  Rapport du général U. Wille, No. 23, p. 331 and No. 25. 27. Ibid., p. 332. 28. André Rochat, “Gendarmerie de l’Armée. Rétrospective historique 1882– 1946”, p. 8. 29. David Auberson, “La Suisse: ‘Terre bénie des espions’”, in Christophe Vuilleumier (ed.), La Suisse et la guerre de 1914–1918: actes du colloque tenu du 10 au 12 septembre 2014 au Château de Penthes, Genève: Slatkine, 2015, pp. 293–306, esp. pp. 298–299. Regrettably, the various parties involved in intelligence and counter-intelligence activities are often only mentioned incidentally, cf. Christophe Vuilleumier, “La lutte contre l’espionnage en Suisse pendant la Première Guerre mondiale”, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains, No. 253, 2014, pp. 73–88; Captain Émile Thilo, “La répression de l’espionnage militaire”, RMS, No. 81, 1936, pp. 592–603. 30. “Arrêté du Conseil fédéral concernant le service de la gendarmerie de l’armée” (12 February 1916), RO n.s., 32, 1917, p. 42. 31.  Rapport du général U. Wille…, (No. 23), p. 333. 32. “Arrêté du Conseil fédéral modifiant partiellement et complétant l’ordonnance sur la gendarmerie de l’armée” (10 November 1916), RO n.s., 32, 1917, pp. 481–482. The same text allows for the recruitment of a maximum number of 250 army gendarmes. 33. Rapport du général U. Wille, (No. 23), pp. 333–334. 34. “Ordonnance concernant l’organisation de la gendarmerie de l’armée” (15 November 1918), RO n.s., 34, pp. 1213–1219, esp. Art. 13, p. 1216. 35. Rapport du général U. Wille (No. 23), p. 334. My italics. 36. Ibid., p. 331. Underlined italics in the original. 37. Hans Rudolf Fuhrer, “Guerre mondiale, Première”, Chapter 1.2: “Le service actif 1914–1918”, DHS, version dated 5 May 2015 (translated from German), http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/f/F8926.php (19 February 2019). 38. Id. 39.  Rapport du général U. Wille (No. 23), p. 332. 40. This refers to an auxiliary military service intended to relieve the army of a certain number of non-combat duties. It concerns men who do not fit physical and other requirements for standard military service. See Hervé de Weck, “Service complémentaire”, DHS, http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/ textes/f/F8692.php (19 February 2019). 41.  Major Werner Lüthi (army general staff), “Sicherheitspolizei und Kriegsmobilmachung”, JMS, Vol. 86, No. 10, October 1940, pp. 553– 569, esp. p. 556 and pp. 561–562. 42. André Rochat, “Gendarmerie de l’Armée. Rétrospective historique 1882– 1946”, p. 8.



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43. Id. 44. Ordonnance concernant l’organisation de la gendarmerie de l’armée (5 August 1914), RO n.s., 30, 1915, p. 365, where it is further indicated that Gendarmerie detectives should perform their duties in plain clothing. The white armband had already been adopted before the war. 45.  Archives fédérales suisses [hereinafter AFS], E27 1000/721 19138, Letter from the head of the DMF’s war technical supplies division (Kriegstechnische Abteilung) to the General Staff Service Dpt. of the general staff of the army, 4 January 1915. 46. Ibid. My translation from the original German where Feldgendarme is used to designate army gendarmes. 47. There was also discussion of other options such as using the uniforms of military judges or those of the general staff. The grey–green uniform adopted in 1915 was only worn by elite troops between June 1915 and the end of 1916—owing to massively late deliveries, these uniforms were only supplied at the end of 1916, cf. n. 38, and Hans Rudolf Kurz, Histoire de l’Armée suisse: de 1815 à nos jours, Lausanne: Editions 24 heures, 1985, pp. 60–66, 70. 48. See Note 32. 49. Major Werner Lüthi (general staff of the army), “Sicherheitspolizei und Kriegsmobilmachung”, JMS, Vol. 86, No. 10, October 1940, p. 562. 50. “Arrêté du Conseil fédéral relatif à l’organisation de la troupe de surveillance” (7 January 1919), RO, n.s. 35, 1920. 51. “Arrêté du Conseil fédéral concernant le renforcement de la gendarmerie de l’armée” (23 July 1918), RO, n.s. 34, 1919, pp. 803–804. 52. AFS, E27 1000/721 8763, “Ordre concernant la remise du commandement de la gendarmerie de l’armée au commandant de la troupe de surveillance”, 2 August 1919. 53.  According to Lieutenant-Colonel Pierre Jordan, “De la gendarmerie de campagne de 1882 à la police militaire de 1995”, RMS, Vol. 139, No. 12, 1994, p. 16, after the end of the war “a significant detachment remained on duty at the border until 1925 but then the Army Gendarmerie almost disappeared”. This assertion seems erroneous regarding both the date being mentioned and the notion of “disappearance” since this force, intended only for wartime, was still regularly called up in the interwar years whenever large-scale army manoeuvers were organised. 54. Hans Rapold, Zeit der Bewährung?, pp. 360–361 and 378–382. 55. “Arrêté fédéral sur l’organisation de l’armée (organisation des troupes)” (18 December 1924), RO n.s., 41, 1926, pp. 53–145, esp. Art. 4. 56. “Message du Conseil fédéral à l’Assemblée fédérale relatif à l’organisation des troupes” (6 May 1924), Feuille fédérale, Vol. 2, No. 21, 1924, pp. 41–244, esp. pp. 62–63, 154.

210  P. HEBEISEN 57. The “field gendarmerie” designation did not altogether disappear. For example, it was still used in 1924 to refer to the military police unit supervising the Swiss army’s large-scale manoeuvres, see Arthur Fonjallaz and Colonel F. Feyler, “A propos des grandes manoeuvres”, RMS, No. 69, 8 August 1924, p. 337. 58. Rapport du général U. Wille (No. 23), p. 293. 59. Georg Kreis (ed.), La protection politique de l’État en Suisse: l’évolution de 1935 à 1990: étude pluridisciplinaire effectuée et éditée sur mandat du Conseil fédéral, par Georg Kreis, Jean-Daniel Delley et Otto K. Kaufmann, avec la collaboration d’Otmar Wigger [German-to-French translation by Bernadette von Arx and Martine Lafitte], Berne, Stuttgart, Vienna: P. Haupt, 1993. 60. See Catherine Denys (ed.), Circulations policières (1750–1914), Villeneuved’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2012. 61. Regarding these issues, analysis of other factors of influence is available from Philippe Hebeisen, “Vers un profil commun?”. 62.  Lukas Gschwend et al., Histoire de la CCDJP, 1905–2005, Zürich: Schulthess verlag, 2005, p. 189.

CHAPTER 15

Fighting the ‘Enemy Within’: Australian Police and Internal Security in World War I Joan Beaumont

The Australian home front was thousands of kilometres from the main battlefields of World War I. Hence its civilians suffered none of the occupation, bombing and blockades that afflicted many European societies. Nonetheless, Australians at home were profoundly affected by the war. Many were bereaved as a result of the huge losses at Gallipoli and on the Western Front—over 60,000 dead from an Australian population that, at the time, was fewer than 5 million. These losses, which accumulated relentlessly in 1916 and 1917, triggered bitter political contestation at home. Most notably, Australian society was torn apart when the national government sought to introduce conscription for overseas service. This issue was put to the popular vote twice, in October 1916 and December 1917; and was rejected twice, albeit by small margins.1 The conscription campaigns were bound to be divisive, given that they raised profound issues about the rights and obligations of the citizens of the democratic

J. Beaumont (*)  Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_15

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state. But this debate was made even more rancorous than it might otherwise have been by the heavy-handed use of executive power by the national Labor government of W. M. (Billy) Hughes. Using extensive emergency powers in a highly partisan manner, the federal government imposed censorship, crushed political dissent, broke strikes and interned enemy aliens. To achieve this societal control it developed a new and extensive security state, of which the state police forces formed one pillar, together with the intelligence branches within the defence forces, a new created surveillance organisation and a national police force. For an institution that already struggled with the anti-authoritarian tendencies in the Australian political culture—largely as a result of the convict origins of the majority of Australian states—the police almost certainly suffered damage to its standing in the community as a result of its close association with this repressive wartime state.

Australia’s Police Forces, 1914 In 1914 Australia had been a federation for only thirteen and a half years. The instruments of government at the national level were therefore relatively rudimentary. There was no national police force but rather six police forces within each of the states (New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia). These police forces had evolved slowly over decades of colonial rule, consolidating around a range of units that at times included mounted police, water (maritime) police and the so-called “native forces”. The latter of these served as an often brutal agent for imposing white rule in regions where frontier violence between settlers and aborigines was widespread and savage. Generally, the police forces were modelled on the organisation and structure of policing in the metropolitan power, England. There was a marked difference, however. Whereas in England control of the forces was traditionally vested in local communities, at the time of federation, Australian police forces were controlled by their respective state governments.2 There were several reasons for this, as the legislation establishing the Victorian police in 1853 explained: in the sparsely settled Australian colonies beset by such problems as attacks by aborigines and bushrangers,3 with the local community whose traditions were more likely to favour breaking than maintaining law and order, an effective police force could only be achieved if control were vested in the central government.4

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These state police were civil forces, with no formal nexus with the military and no responsibility for applying military law within Australia’s defence forces. Rather, the personnel of the volunteer force raised to fight World War I, the Australian Imperial Force (AIF), were subject to the federal Defence Act of 1903 and, since the AIF was under British imperial command, the British Army Act. At the unit level, the local commander acted as the “summary authority” and was authorised to administer, without recourse to court martial, punishments such as extra duties, loss of pay, confinement to barracks and short periods of detention.5 Beyond the unit, the military police were responsible for disciplining an army that soon became notorious for its refusal to salute and high levels of absence without leave.6 The Red Caps, as the military police were known, became roundly detested—a story beyond the scope of this chapter.7 Domestic police forces, meanwhile, struggled with their own reputational issues. In the early decades of European settlement, the police were recruited from serving or emancipated convicts and poor-quality military personnel—not the best material from which to create a cohort of effective or respected law enforcers. During the gold rush days of the mid-nineteenth century, moreover, the police had been seen as oppressors when they collected irksome license fees on behalf of the government. This was especially so in Victoria, where an uprising by angry miners occurred at Eureka, Ballarat, in December 1854: an event which entered Australian folklore as a key moment in the development of Australian democracy and Australian identity. To add to this, Australian police in the colonial period had to operate within a political culture which inherited not only the British distrust of police as an instrument of political oppression but also the negative legacy of convict settlement in four of the six states. Many Australians were instinctively anti-authoritarian and distrustful of state power.8 As historian Russel Ward put it: “It may be doubted whether the police force of any English speaking country, except Ireland, has ever been more thoroughly unpopular than were those of most Australian colonies in the last century”.9 Naturally there were attempts by the various state governments to address these reputational issues in the decades before World War I. There was some improvement in quality of personnel as higher standards of physique and education were demanded of police recruits. However, the relatively unattractive pay and conditions limited the attractiveness of policing and its professional standing.10

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Wartime Policing Challenges: Loss of Personnel When war came in August 1914, the state police forces confronted a range of new challenges. The first, though not entirely novel, problem was the retention of qualified personnel. As mentioned, the AIF was composed entirely of volunteers, since the Defence Act passed by the young federal parliament in 1903 prohibited the deployment overseas of Australia’s permanent army, which consisted of a small number of artillery and administrative staff only. Conscription had been introduced in 1911 but this was limited to home defence, in peacetime only. Hence, the wartime army was dependent upon voluntarism. The processes whereby men chose to serve were largely unregulated, since there was no declaration of “reserved occupations” quarantined from recruitment. Any man who met the age and medical requirements of the AIF and was “substantially of European origin or descent” (that is, not an enemy alien or an Aboriginal Australian),11 could enlist for military service. Inevitably many police officers did so over the 4 years of the war. The precise number is difficult to determine, since records compiled at the time of enlistment were not very detailed. The best source of information today is the AIF database, which has been compiled from a range of official sources, including personal files on the Australian National Archives website and Embarkation and Nominal Rolls on the Australian War Memorial website.12 This lists at least 446 men who described their civilian occupation as “police”, “police officer”, “constable” or “superintendent constabulary”.13 More than half of these listed their place of residence as being in New South Wales or Victoria, the two most populous states at this time. Some 79 (or 18%) of the total number were killed in action or died of wounds. The honour roll in Queensland Police Headquarters, meanwhile, states that some 30 officers from that force were killed during World War I.14 Victoria Police Museum claims that 138 police members chose to serve, of whom 27 were killed in action or died of wounds.15 In South Australia, with a smaller population, 11 former police officers were killed.16 To add to these losses to the AIF, the police forces were depleted by transfers to military intelligence branches of the army and navy. As the surveillance role of these agencies expanded within the burgeoning wartime security state, these units recruited personnel with prior policing experience. Any officer with German language skills was especially valued.17

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Wartime Policing Challenges: Controlling Enemy Aliens This skill was in demand because one of the first tasks facing the army and the police in wartime was to monitor and keep under surveillance enemy aliens: that is, Australian residents who had been born in an enemy country, or who had parents of that extraction. According to the census of 1911, there were 32,990 Australian residents who had been born in Germany and 2774 born in Austria–Hungary.18 There were also 74,508 Lutherans, a Christian affiliation that was taken to be an indicator of German descent. Since German settlers had formed their own “colonies” in the nineteenth century, each state had identifiably “German areas”, like the wine-growing Barossa Valley in South Australia.19 With the outbreak of war at least some of these “enemy aliens” were assumed to be security risks. On 10 August 1914, therefore, all those of German birth were required to report to the nearest police station, registering their personal details and signing parole declarations promising that they would not take any action prejudicial to the British Empire during the war. When war between Britain and Austria–Hungary was declared a week later, Austrian Australians were required to do the same. In time, this surveillance net was cast more widely and was supplemented by an extensive system of internment camps. Ultimately, some 6890 enemy aliens were interned and 4260 persons kept on parole under police supervision. Admittedly, some 2390 of those interned were sailors of enemy nationality who had been taken off ships while in Australian ports, or people who had been resident in other British-controlled territories in Southeast Asian and Pacific regions and had been transported to Australia at the request of the British government. However, some 4500 internees had been resident in Australia before 1914; 700 had even become British subjects through naturalization, while 70 had been born in Australia.20 The internment camp system that was spread across the nation was managed by the federal Department of Defence, but state police forces played a critical role in the wider surveillance system. The police, after all, possessed skilled investigators, and had experience in maintaining comprehensive records, conducting prosecutions and securing convictions in the civil courts. Hence, it was the police who decided what initial restrictions might be imposed on aliens once they had completed

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their “yellow forms” of registration. The police would issue “Provisional Orders” requiring an alien to give notice of any change of address or to report to the local police station at various intervals. Again, it was police officers who made secret reports to the intelligence sections of their respective military districts, and conveyed impressions of the testimony of individual aliens, their political opinions and the likelihood of their having dangerous associations. Most importantly, police gave assessments as to whether a particular alien should be subject to further examination by military authorities. The individuals caught up in this web of surveillance, it must be stressed, had no access to normal judicial appeal processes or to legal representation. The onus was on them to prove that they were not hostile enemy aliens, as claimed by the police. Thus, as Gerhard Fischer said, Australian police forces assisted the intelligence departments of military units in coordinating “a considerable secret service operation which soon covered practically all of Australia”.21

Wartime Policing Challenges: Managing Political Dissent This often arbitrary system of internment was legitimised by emergency powers which were granted to the federal government by the national parliament through the War Precautions Act of October 1914. This now infamous legislation invested the executive branch of government with the power to introduce such laws as it deemed to be necessary for “securing the public safety and defence of the Commonwealth” during the war. In its original version22 the War Precautions Act both authorised the confinement and deportation of aliens (clause 5), and proscribed manifest threats to security, such as publishing information about the movements or dispositions of military or naval forces without lawful authority. However, beyond this the Act prohibited any Australian from spreading reports “by word of mouth or in writing” that were “likely to cause disaffection or alarm among the forces or the civilian population” (reg. 7). Most significantly, the Act also empowered the vice-regal representative, the governor-general, acting on the advice of the Australian government, to make regulations which immediately had the same force as law. Between 1914 and 1918 the War Precautions Act was amended several times and its regulations were increased, until they numbered more

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than 100. Freedoms of speech and public assembly were increasingly controlled, in a manner that favoured the agenda of the conservative elites. For example, the anti-conscriptionist press was heavily censored while anti-conscriptionist public meetings were monitored and controlled. The activities of government critics were scrutinised, arrests were frequent and even the flying of the red flag was prohibited, as anti-communist paranoia grew in response to the Russian revolution of 1917. Moreover, War Precautions Act regulations were used not just to silence political dissent but to crush industrial militancy, especially when a massive general strike by an increasingly disillusioned trade-union movement spread along the eastern seaboard of Australia in August–September 1917. So great was the discretion bestowed on the government under the War Precautions Act that when the Solicitor General Robert Garran was once asked, “Would it be an offence under the War Precautions Act ….?” he simply cut the questioner off with “Yes”.23 Meanwhile a popular cartoon by Hal Eyre depicted Garran being accosted by Prime Minister Hughes asking why the “War Precautions Machine”—made to manufacture “Regulations in any quantity while you wait”—had stopped production temporarily. “You see”, Garran tells the Prime Minister, “she’s been doing such a lot of overtime lately, I was afraid she might run hot”.24 A local newspaper meanwhile wrote at the time the war ended: The War Precautions Act stands for government by regulation. It gives practically despotic powers to Ministers and those entrusted with the carrying out of the regulations. Even though they may all be good-natured and well-meaning despots this is not the kind of government which Australians desire. It reduces Parliament to a machine for registering the decrees of the Cabinet.25

It fell to the domestic police to be the agents of enforcement of this unpopular Act and its regulations. It was they who raided the premises of organisations that were under surveillance, who kept potential dissidents under surveillance, who shadowed trade unionists and worked with the censor to track down anti-conscriptionist pamphlets.26 It was they who assisted in court proceedings against thousands of individuals charged with diverse petty offences: making statements likely to prejudice recruiting; fund raising without official permission; posting letters to an enemy country without attaching the sender’s full name and address; failing to

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submit newspaper articles to the censor before publication; even, in the case of a tailor, selling a pair of military riding breeches “of the King’s uniform” without authority.27 More sinister than any of this was the involvement of the police, particularly in New South Wales, in the persecution of members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). This syndicalist organisation, which adopted a public stance against a war it believed was an imperialistic and capitalist struggle over the distribution of international markets and profits, was demonised by Hughes as an intolerable threat to national security. By 1916 the police were compiling reports on its branch membership and funding sources and monitoring and arresting its members on a variety of charges. Finally, after several suspicious fires broke out in Sydney, the NSW police arrested 12 IWW leaders on charges of forgery, treason, felony, conspiracy and arson. In the trial which followed, the only evidence against the accused was uncorroborated and provided by police informers. The defendants’ alibis were disallowed. Predictably, all 12 IWW leaders were found guilty either on all, or some, of the charges, receiving jail sentences of 5–15 years (two sentences were reduced in February 1917 on appeal).28 Given that the episode had many of the elements of an orchestrated scare, the IWW “Twelve” soon became a cause celèbre of civil libertarians. As the radical member of federal parliament, Frank Anstey, said: “What is the good of victory abroad if it only gives us slavery at home?”29 Yet, undeterred Hughes managed to pass in late 1916 the Unlawful Associations Act which proscribed the IWW. A later amendment to this Act, in mid-1917, made even membership of the organization a criminal offence punishable by 6 months in jail. “Membership” was defined very broadly to include “in the absence of proof to the contrary”, having “since the beginning of the war repeatedly (a) attended meetings of the association; or (b) spoken publicly in advocacy of the association; or (c) distributed literature of the association”.30 Anyone who remained a member of an unlawful association was prohibited from being a member of the Commonwealth Public Service. Ultimately, perhaps 20 IWW members who had not been born in Australia were deported after serving their sentences.31 Beyond all this, the police forces had the increasingly contentious role of maintaining public order. Recruitment rallies and meetings about the conscription referenda were enormous and soon descended into emotional and physical violence. It seems that the mass grief of battle

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losses in the great maw of industrial warfare was deflected hysterically onto political opponents at home. The streets were also filled at times with drunken and disaffected returned soldiers, some of whom took it upon themselves to physically disrupt rallies against conscription. Public order was further shattered when the government responded to the general strike of 1917 by mobilising volunteer strikebreakers or “scabs”. On two nights in September 1917 the city and inner suburbs of Melbourne erupted—windows of prestigious shops were smashed and vandals damaged a factory where management was adopting a particularly intransigent attitude towards strikers trying to return to work. Enraged, the city authorities banned public meetings and organised a force of volunteer constables to roam the streets with batons. Thus, in diverse ways Australian police forces became deeply implicated in the processes of repression in the interests of an increasingly authoritarian state. As a leading author of political surveillance in Australia, Frank Cain has said, “an association between protest and criminality was … continually reinforced in the public’s mind”.32 Not only did this damage the Australian political culture in ways that took years to repair; but it presumably impacted negatively on the reputation of the police, who were manifestly one of the pillars of the pervasive system of political and military surveillance, the other two being the censor and various intelligence branches of defence.

The Growth of the Security State These intelligence agencies themselves expanded considerably as the war continued. In 1914 the only intelligence services were within the defence forces. These had responsibility for strategic intelligence, for drafting and enforcing regulations of the War Precautions Act and for monitoring and detaining enemy aliens, in collaboration (as we have seen) with the police.33 However, in 1916 the security apparatus was expanded with the creation of a new Counter Espionage Bureau (CEB), later known as the Special Intelligence Bureau (SIB). This was established on the suggestion of the British Counter Espionage Bureau (then MO5, later MI5) in London, and was located within the office of the governor-general, and headed by his official secretary, Major George Steward. Its anomalous location owed something to the fact that, under the contemporary system for imperial communications, all messages from the Australian government to London were channelled through the governor-general.

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Steward held the cipher code for such communications; and, initially at least, had the confidence of two key players on the Australian political scene, the Governor-General Sir Ronald Crauford Munro Ferguson and Prime Minister Hughes.34 The role of this small (only three staff in addition to Steward) “Melbourne Bureau” was to detect espionage, give advice to police on legislation and conduct surveillance of foreign travellers. There was an obvious potential for duplication of effort with Army Military Intelligence35 and the police; particularly as Steward chose to focus his efforts on the “enemy within” Australia, including the IWW, and the Irish Republican Brotherhood (which had been radicalised by the British crushing of the Easter Uprising).36 In the event, his bureau did not simply convey intelligence to London, as originally envisaged, but became a further instrument of political surveillance, at the service of Hughes and Garran. For Munro Ferguson who nicknamed Steward “Pickle the Spy”, this politicisation of his own office was a matter of increasing alarm. He campaigned, ultimately successfully, for Steward to be replaced as director of the bureau.37 As if the surveillance machinery were not complex enough, in late 1917 Hughes created a Commonwealth Police Force. It should be recalled that no national police force existed at that time, and Hughes, increasingly paranoid at the height of the second conscription campaign, became convinced that the Queensland government and its police force could not be relied upon to enforce Commonwealth law. The premier of that state, T. J. Ryan, had been elected on a program of radical social reform in 1915, and opposed conscription and the more draconian measures of the federal government against left-wing activists. In 1917 Ryan emerged to be one of Hughes’ most prominent bêtes noires, while the national surveillance authorities thought that Queensland had become a haven for IWW members escaping arrest in other states. Matters came to a head on 29 November 1917 when Hughes stopped while passing through the Queensland town of Warwick to address a public meeting of the local Reinforcements Committee. Someone in the crowd threw a well-aimed egg at him, and in his typically aggressive manner he rushed into the crowd demanding that police arrest the assailant. Hughes also remonstrated with a local police officer in plain clothes who insisted that he was under the instructions of the Queensland, rather than the federal, government. Hughes would later demand the officer’s suspension and prosecution under Commonwealth law.38 A later

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official enquiry into the Warwick incident exonerated the Queensland police. But Hughes seized the opportunity to strengthen federal power by creating a Commonwealth Police Force. The need for such a force had already been identified, to provide the Commonwealth with the ability to conduct enquiries on its behalf. But for Hughes it was a more personal crusade. He wrote to Munro Ferguson: “there’s going to be great fight. Glory be to God for that! I’m trying to make Ryan, … realise that this is not Ireland as the Sinn Fein would have”.39 The Commonwealth Police’s powers nominally encompassed intelligence, counter-sabotage and protecting federal property, and it was meant to intervene in states where local government did not enforce Commonwealth law. In practice the force, which remained small, found little to do. Dubbed by the Brisbane left-wing as “Hughes’ fusiliers”, it operated mainly in Brisbane where it monitored meetings of the left, and reported on conversations overheard in hotels and trams.40 By 1919 the federal Cabinet recommended that the force, created in a moment of wartime crisis, be disbanded. Its few remaining officers were merged with the military SIB to form the Investigations Branch, later known as the Commonwealth Investigations Branch.41

Conclusion The effect of World War I was to create within Australia a labyrinthine structure for handling espionage, intelligence and police matters (Fig. 15.1). Inevitably, given the ad hoc and improvised manner in which this security apparatus grew, there were serious problems of coordination, duplication, complicated reporting lines and overlapping of functions— problems that the Minister of Defence, George Pearce, tried to address in early 1918.42 It is difficult to judge the effectiveness of all this policing and surveillance. Certainly, the internment of enemy aliens was rigorous, if anything, too much so, since an unknown number of personnel were incarcerated and stigmatized for no reason other than ethnicity. They probably posed no threat to the war effort. Similarly, it is unclear whether the diverse efforts of the police and surveillance agencies actually prevented sabotage and espionage. In the official history of Australian intelligence, David Horner concludes there is scant evidence of any spy activity in Australia during World War I, for the simple reason

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Fig. 15.1  Surveillance organisations of the First World War (Adapted by CartoGIS, The Australian National University, from Frank Cain, The Origins of Political Surveillance in Australia, Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1983, p. XI)

that: “[r]emote from the centre of Empire, Australia was not involved in strategic policymaking or even military planning, and thus there were few secrets to be stolen”.43 Similarly, the likelihood of sabotage was remote, given that Australia did not develop any significant or critical war industries but remained rather a supplier of primary goods, such as wheat and wool, to Britain. The impact of security agencies on the conduct of political debate within Australia, however, was much more evident. Thanks to War Precautions Act regulations, censorship was vigorously applied, public dissent was often muzzled and the influence of radical organizations, like the IWW, were, in its case, broken forever. Yet even here, the judgment of success must be qualified. Despite the heavy-handed imposition of state surveillance in 1916 and 1917, the opponents of conscription won the debate. The majority of Australians refused to accept their government’s arguments and twice voted “No”. It was a remarkable victory for grass-roots activism, trade union organization and the brilliant invective

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of the left-wing press that refused to be cowed by an increasingly authoritarian state. Yet the criminalisation of dissent during the war left a bitterly divided society in which the distrust of authority, which had characterised Australians since their origins as a convict settlement was, arguably increased. In Melbourne, for example, public speakers condemned the police as “spies and pimps guilty of treachery to the working class”.44 Moreover, the use of the police forces and intelligence organizations to attack political opponents in a manifestly partisan manner fuelled traditional distrust of those agencies, including the police, involved in national security. To quote Horner again: “the belief arose among those concerned about civil liberties that the SIB and its successors had been established primarily to conduct political surveillance”.45 It was a belief that did not end with the war but continued in some quarters for almost a century, even though conditions under which successive security services operated changed markedly over the years.46

Notes



1. For a detailed description of the conscription debates, see Joan Beaumont, Broken Nation: Australians in the Great War, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2013, pp. 219–248, 374–389. 2.  Duncan Chappell and Paul R. Wilson, The Police and the Public in Australia and New Zealand, St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, 1969, pp. 1–2. 3. This term refers to those men who took up “robbery under arms” as a way of life, using the Australian wooded landscape (or bush) as their base. 4. Quoted in Kerry Milte, Police in Australia: Development. Functions and Procedures, Sydney: Butterworth, 1977, p. 26. 5. Graham Wilson, Accommodating the King’s Hard Bargain: Military Detention in the Australian Army 1914–1947, Newport, NSW: Big Sky Publishing, 2016, pp. 49, 72. 6. See Ashley Ekins, “Fighting to Exhaustion: Morale, Discipline and Combat Effectiveness in the Armies of 1918”, in Ashley Ekins (ed.), 1918: Year of Victory, Auckland: Exisle, 2010, pp. 111–129; Bill Gammage, The Broken Years: Australian Soldiers in the Great War, Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin, 1975, first published 1974, pp. 36–37, 39–40, 231–232; Peter Stanley, Bad Characters: Sex, Crime, Mutiny, Murder and the Australian Imperial Force, Sydney: Pier, 2010, passim. 7. Bill Gammage, The Broken Years, pp. 122–123, 234.

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8.  For histories of the police forces, see Peter Conole, Protect & Serve: A History of Policing in Western Australia, Bayswater, WA: Western Australia Police Service, 2002; Robert Haldane, The People’s Force: A History of the Victoria Police, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, Second Edition, 1995; G. O’Brien, The Australian Police Forces, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1960; W. Ross Johnston, The Long Blue Line: A History of the Queensland Police, Brisbane: Boolarong Publications, 1992. 9.  Quoted in Duncan Chappell and Paul R. Wilson, The Police and the Public, p. 9. 10. W. Ross Johnston, The Long Blue Line, p. 114. 11.  The wording is taken from the Defence Act, amended in 1909, clause 138(b). Initially Aboriginal Australians were excluded from military service in World War I. However, the manpower crisis of 1917 resulted in Aboriginal Australians of mixed descent being permitted to enlist. Possibly 1000 Indigenous Australians served in World War I. Noah Riseman, Defending Country: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Military Service Since 1945, St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, 2016, pp. 6–7. 12. The AIF Project, https://aif.adfa.edu.au/aif/ (19 February 2019). 13. A further 34 men stated their occupations as “inspector”, but this was term applied to many occupations beyond policing. This data was kindly provided by Professor Peter Dennis, creator of the AIF Project, Australian Defence Force Academy/University of New South Wales, Canberra, June 2016. 14. Queensland War Memorial Register, “Queensland Police Service Honour Board”, http://www.qldwarmemorials.com.au/memorial/?id=1005 (19 February 2019). 15. Victoria Police Museum, “Anzac Commemorations”, http://www.policemuseum.vic.gov.au/research/anzac-commemorations (19 February 2019). 16. “South Australian Police Hold ANZAC Day Service”, ABC News, 17 April 2016, http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-17/sa-police-holdanzac-service-for-fallen-police-officers/7333020 (19 February 2019). 17. Frank Cain, The Origins of Political Surveillance in Australia, Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1983, pp. 142–143. 18. Ernest Scott, Australia During the War, Vol. XI, The Official History of Australia in the War of 1914–1918, St Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, 1989, first published 1936, p. 105. 19. Michael McKernan, The Australian People and the Great War, Sydney: Collins, 1984, p. 151. 20. Gehrard Fischer, Enemy Aliens: Internment and the Homefront Experience in Australia, St Lucia, Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1989, p. 77. 21. Ibid., p. 75.

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22. War Precautions Act 1914, https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/ C1914A00010 (19 February 2019). 23. Ernest Scott, Australia During the War, p. 54. 24.  Daily Telegraph, 8 December 1917, State Library of Victoria. Accessed via http://tols.peo.gov.au/parliament-and-the-war/war-precautions-act1914 (19 February 2019). 25. “The War Precautions Act”, Lithgow Mercury, 25 November 1918. 26.  For details see Frank Cain, The Origins of Political Surveillance, pp. 144–145. 27.  For example, see “Prosecution Under War Precautions Act”, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 December 1917; “War Precautions Act”, Argus (Melbourne), 1 November 1918; “War Precautions Act”, Malvern Standard (VIC), 13 April 1918; “War Precautions Act Case”, The Week (Brisbane) 25 January 1918; “War Precautions Act”, Albury Banner and Wodonga Express, 27 April 1917. 28. See Ian Turner, Sydney’s Burning, Melbourne: Heinemann, 1967; Frank Cain, The Origins of Political Surveillance, pp. 147–155; Frank Cain, The Wobblies at War: A History of the IWW and the Great War in Australia, Richmond, VIC: Spectrum, 1993, pp. 201–226. 29.  Quoted in Leslie C. Jauncey, The Story of Conscription in Australia, London: George Allen & Unwin, 1935, p. 183. 30.  Unlawful Associations Act 1917, https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/ C1917A00014 (19 February 2019). 31. Frank Cain, The Origins of Political Surveillance, p. 160. 32. Ibid., p. 143. 33. David Horner, The Spy Catchers: The Official History of ASIO 1949–1963. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, p. 13. 34. Frank Cain, The Origins of Political Surveillance, p. 2. 35. Naval intelligence tended to be focused narrowly on leakage of information about ship movements and preventing sabotage. 36. The Easter Uprising was an armed insurrection launched in April 1916 by Irish republicans with the aim of establishing an independent Irish republic while the United Kingdom was distracted by the war. Outnumbered, the rebels were defeated by the British Army which responded by executing 15 of the Irish leaders, an action which is widely thought to have swayed public opinion, including among Irish Australians, towards the rebels’ cause. 37. For details see Frank Cain, The Origins of Political Surveillance, pp. 5–8, 24. 38. See Joan Beaumont, Broken Nation, pp. 382–385. 39.  See Laurence F. Fitzhardinge, The Little Digger 1914–1953: William Morris Hughes—A Political Biography, Vol. II, London: Angus & Robertson, 1979, pp. 291–295.



226  J. BEAUMONT 40. Frank Cain, The Origins of Political Surveillance, pp. 176–177. 41. David Horner, The Spy Catchers, p. 16. 42. Frank Cain, The Origins of Political Surveillance, p. 32. 43. David Horner, The Spy Catchers, p. 16 44. Frank Cain, The Origins of Political Surveillance, p. 155. 45. David Horner, Spy Catchers, pp. 15–16. 46.  One of the wartime successor agencies, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, for example, was long accused of being used as a political tool of conservative governments, of seeking to undermine left-wing organisations and even of having a role in the controversial dismissal of the Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam in 1975. The authoritative text on this subject is John Blaxland, The Protest Years: The Official History of ASIO 1963–1975, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2015.

CHAPTER 16

Coercion, Consent and Surveillance: Policing New Zealand Richard S. Hill

Introduction The Colony of New Zealand, established in 1840, became a self-governing Dominion in 1907. At the outermost edge of “the British world”, the country considered itself both a paradise on Earth and “the most loyal” nation of the Empire which protected its good fortunes. During the First World War it prided itself on making a greater per capita contribution in men, money and blood than any other part of the Empire. Although it was the farthest participant in the conflict, the government declared the country to be in a state of national emergency from the beginning of warfare, and a considerable majority of its small population remained mobilised in support of the war effort until the end of hostilities.1 The New Zealand Police Force (NZPF) played a key role in both military and social mobilisation for war. In their role as the principal “eyes and ears” of the state, from August 1914 its constables were tasked with tighter monitoring of the social condition and greater surveillance over R. S. Hill (*)  Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_16

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individuals and organisations. Their coercive powers were magnified by wartime laws and regulations that were socially intrusive and, for sections of society, undoubtedly repressive. Despite this vast increase in police (and other) surveillance and compulsion, however, the state’s preferred method of handling opposition to its war aims and methods was the use of persuasion rather than coercion. The police portrayed themselves as “servants” rather than coercers of the public. This chapter’s examination of the interaction between the processes of coaxing and coercing—of police attempts to balance social consent and state discipline—points to the complexity of the notion of “the public peace” in times of perceived threats to national security. With police resources coming under great strain during the war (despite a decline in “ordinary crime”), it was all the more important to secure the cooperation of the majority of citizens in policing significant minorities opposed to the state’s war policies. The NZPF’s general effectiveness in enforcing these policies was undoubtedly facilitated by support within large sections of society. This greatly assisted its quest for an appropriate balance between persuasion and punishment, despite the emergency conditions.2

Historical Background By 1914 the New Zealand police were well placed to find such a balance. Their origins lay in highly coercive organisations which had imposed order upon an often turbulent colonial frontier, especially through pacification of the indigenous Maori population. The early colonial police forces were often influenced in their ethos and strategy by Britain’s repressive Irish Constabulary, although other forces were also instanced during the many debates about the most efficient forms of policing— French colonial military and policing formations included.3 After rebel Maori were militarily defeated by the early 1870s, however, the colonial frontier and its associated turbulence receded. By 1886 the country was deemed to be “tamed”.4 When the NZPF was created in that year as a civilian body separated out from the military, the politicians voted for a policing system that did not involve the routine carrying of firearms. Its constables were instructed to follow the precepts of the London Metropolitan Police. Looking and behaving just like British “Bobbies”, policemen were urged to “protect” rather than “oppress” citizens and to avoid excessive force. They were tasked, in other words, with securing social consent for the

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colony’s policing system.5 Commissioner John O’Donovan summed up this ethos shortly after the First World War: “We keep a baton, but seldom use it; when we do its application should be scrupulously proportioned to the need”.6 By 1914, the great majority of New Zealanders agreed with, or at least acquiesced in, the overall approach to social control deployed by the NZPF. The securing of consent or acquiescence was inextricably tied to the fact that, over the previous quarter of a century, the country had developed into one of the most socially tranquil in the world. Its 1.1 million people, who inhabited a land mass larger than Britain, were accordingly able to be policed by a mere 870 men.7

Coercion and Consent At the beginning of the war there was some considerable debate as to whether “policing by consent” could survive the declaration of a national emergency and all that it entailed. Many authorities, however, were aware that any reversion to highly coercive modes of social control might well threaten to undermine public support for the state and thereby impede, rather than promote, the war effort. This assessment prevailed, and so the police continued to adhere to London police guidelines as far as possible. This in turn meant that public support for policing continued within very sizeable sections of the population, despite increasing opposition to various aspects of the government’s war effort after early jingoism had been tempered by disillusion and war weariness. The relative success of the consent strategy in turn encouraged state authorities to allocate new policing functions to the police, including some which built upon pre-war expectations that constables should be societal role models and mentors. They were expected to take a lead in such activities as fund-raising, persuading young men to sign up for combat, motivating civilians to engage in war-effort production and helping remove perceived impediments to the war effort, such as excessive drinking or sexual promiscuity. Furthermore, after initial enthusiasm for the war effort had dissipated, and both military recruitment and social enthusiasm had declined, the government launched remobilisation campaigns that also allocated proactive roles to constables. The use of state-legitimated compulsion and force, the sine qua non of policing, could always, of course, be resorted to when moral suasion failed. Sectors of society which actively hindered the government’s war

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effort would feel the force of the “iron hand” inside the “velvet glove” of consensual policing. Indeed, given both the perennial police capacity to strike hard when the state deemed it necessary (as in the severe industrial confrontations in 1912–1913) and the NZPF’s evolution towards a consensual and relatively benign methodology, operational and policy changes in wartime can be viewed as an intensification and fine-tuning of already available methods which combined the coercing of the recalcitrant and the quest for widespread public support. In the event, the police generally managed to achieve a viable balance between force and persuasion, despite war regulations which ongoingly increased the state’s capacity to control and repress. The political executive could, for example, regulate all aspects of national life without reference to Parliament, and override pre-existing legislation at will. The country’s top legal official called this situation a “constitutional revolution”, one which was needed to establish the “despotic government” required by the “national emergency”.8 Wartime Police Commissioner (until late 1916) John Cullen, a former Irish policeman who had joined the New Zealand police in the days of paramilitary policing, was eminently suited to plan and implement repressive social control.9 With the outbreak of war, police monitoring focused significantly on potential or actual enrollees in the armed forces. In particular, constables assisted the military authorities to weed out men of “bad character”, especially those who might “infect” their fellow soldiers with “unhealthy” attitudes.10 Much of the public supported such measures as necessary for the defence of the realm. Given that they stopped individuals going to war rather than compelled them to fight, moreover, the intrusion upon civil liberties seemed slight. Enlistees who had deserted before embarking for the front also needed to be tracked down and handed over to the military police, and there was little public sympathy for such men. More generally, a policy of “wise use of discretion”— erring on the side of leniency—when dealing with would-be or actual soldiers assisted the police to continue to enjoy widespread social legitimation.11

Policing Resistance The policing of potential or actual resistors to government war policies was more problematic. From the beginning, “enemy aliens”, together with many individuals of German or Austro-Hungarian descent or

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connection, were placed under close scrutiny and subject to arrest or other restrictions. This affected the lives of many people who had no sympathy with the governments of the countries from which they had originated or into which they had married. But the more draconian punishments, including internment, were generally targeted at those relative few who were believed to have the potential to hamper the war effort or even to actively assist the Central Powers. Opposition to war policies from within the New Zealand left was seen by the authorities to pose a much greater problem than pro-German activities. But here too the policy was one of comparative caution. While the police had quickly begun to monitor potentially disruptive or subversive leftist organisations and individuals, the state generally punished only the most vocal and active of resisters to the war or its conduct. Such relative tolerance helped widen the circles of those who gave consent to policing, however qualified the approval might be. All the same, the police duty to enforce wartime regulations, discourage resistance to the war effort and encourage public participation in war-orientated social mobilisation did lead to tension with sectors of society usually considered to be law-abiding. These included pacifist circles and “moderate” sections of the labour movement which, inter alia, felt uneasy about the disproportionate sacrifices expected from young working-class men. There was also monitoring of groups not necessarily on the left, such as religious dissenters. When voluntary enlistment flagged, and greater official and social pressure to enrol for the fighting front was brought to bear, the number of potentially unsuitable soldiers rose and added to the police burden. Then, in August 1916, against much opposition, nationwide military conscription for non-Maori men of eligible age was introduced.12 In response, the numbers opposed to the government’s war policies expanded considerably. This created an increased compliance workload for police, such as monitoring men of eligible age and tracking down large numbers of defaulters and absconders. Its longstanding engagement with communities helped the NZPF cope with this new burden, and considerable information on the location of “shirkers” and “slackers” was provided to the force.13 On the other hand, with the imposition of conscription significant sections of society—especially within the labour and socialist movements—expressed their concern about or opposition to aspects of the war effort. Anti-conscriptionists argued (among other things) that

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compulsory enlistment of labour should not be contemplated unless it was accompanied by conscription of capital and capitalists. Suppression of literature deemed to impede social mobilisation formed a significant focus of police duties. The Labour Party’s peace manifesto was among the literature confiscated during a police raid. Police also worked with other agencies in following up information gleaned from interception and censorship of vast quantities of private mail.14 Anti-conscription and similar movements, together with disaffected Maori tribes and other communities, helped young men to resist call-up to the military forces, hid military deserters and campaigned against inequality of sacrifice. As a result, war regulations tightened and in turn policemen more often investigated people with whom they had not previously had adversarial relationships. Random police searches were periodically launched in public venues and places of work, in addition to raids based on both public tip-offs and the targeted surveillance of relatives and associates of men avoiding military service. Rural constables spent days at a time tracking defaulters and deserters who had fled to forested or mountainous areas. At the end of August 1917, 3054 men were being sought. Relative police success in apprehending many such offenders further increased tension between the state and circles opposed to some or all the government’s wartime requirements. It was logical that, as the state’s main enforcers, policemen bore the brunt of much social disquiet and anger. Growing agitation, in particular from within the working class, posed the main challenge to the notion of the police as “servants of the public”. Labour movement leaders dominated the ranks of those arrested for seditious utterances and activities, including men who would eventually become leading politicians when the Labour Party took power some 20 years later—among them future Prime Minister Peter Fraser. Harry Holland, later leader of the Labour Party, recalled that by December 1916 “almost half the effective platform propagandists of the Labour Movement were placed behind prison bars”.15 As well as activists opposing the war or aspects of its conduct, many other citizens came under police scrutiny as new war regulations emerged. After disruption to production had been categorised as subversive, for example, in 1917 and 1918 police launched pre-emptive raids on union offices during instances of industrial action. Many workers considered that a notional line between the political and the industrial had been violated. In particular, those who supported the struggle

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against the Central Powers, but felt that their employers were taking advantage of the emergency to exploit them, argued that quite different types of discontent were being unfairly bundled together without differentiation.16 Popular consent for police and state was also complicated by endemic difficulties in enforcing wartime liquor restrictions upon the many circles whose leisure time focussed on alcohol; for example, prohibiting “treating” (taking turns to buy rounds of drinks in pubs, leading to excessive drinking) in 1916 or the requirement, in 1917, that all pubs close at 6 p.m. Official efforts to ameliorate social discontent over such socially intrusive measures included gradually phasing in their enforcement. Unofficially, moreover, policemen often ignored all but the most flagrant breaches of liquor licensing regulations, and of “moral policing” measures such as those aimed at suppressing prostitution.17 While enforcement of draconian regulations did strain social consent, resistance generally posed no fundamental threat to the war effort and so policing’s iron hand could be used sparingly. It could fall hard, however, upon those engaged in proactive and organised opposition to government policies, including Maori dissentients. While some tribes were loyal and supplied manpower on both the home and military fronts, those that had suffered most from colonisation refused to cooperate. In April 1916, Commissioner Cullen headed a column of armed policemen through the rugged Urewera mountains to suppress a community led by the Maori prophet Rua Kenana, whose self-determinationist aspirations were seen to subvert the war effort. The invasion has been aptly described as being “conducted like a military operation”, the final action of the wars between the state and Maori over sovereignty and its exercise—a heightened issue in a national emergency, exacerbated in this case by the prophet’s reported pro-German utterances.18 Less dramatic but equally suppressive measures were taken by the government, and hence by the police, against several other Maori communities. The Waikato confederation of tribes, in particular, not only refused to encourage the war effort but also actively discouraged their young men from enlisting until tribal demands relating to colonial confiscation of their ancestral lands had been addressed. In 1917 conscription was imposed upon the young men of the confederation, providing the police with yet another difficult responsibility—one in which they were largely ineffective, because the men subject to call-up were hidden by their communities.19

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Despite such confrontations, and draconian actions taken against a number of European dissenters such as conscientious objectors (some of whom were forcibly shipped to the fighting front), the authorities continued to believe that undue force might induce civil unrest and thus impede the war effort. This in turn allowed the police to continue to enjoy a degree of social consent that was high for circumstances of national emergency. Moreover, the policing task was assisted by a loss of momentum in counter-mobilisation against the war effort, especially when adverse news from the military front made opposition seem unpatriotic in many quarters. In fact, by mid-1917, a resigned acceptance of the inevitability of even conscription of labour on the home front had set in among a number of previously opposed sections of society. The social resistance which remained was seen to be insufficiently damaging to New Zealand’s war contribution, or its national security, to require endemic and overt repression. The state’s policy of police restraint whenever possible seemed vindicated by the results: opposition to aspects of the war effort from the left and other sections of society had been mostly confined to words and actions that fell far short of fullscale confrontation with authority (let alone of rebellion). When militant action among pockets of European and Maori society had occurred, moreover, it had been readily containable.20

Policing “Loyalism” As we have seen, wartime exigencies did not require a full reversion to the blunt weapons of the frontier past. Moreover, they had only partially deflected the professionalising trajectory set in place with the establishment of the NZPF. In fact, the general move towards “modern”, civil methods became, in some aspects of policing, all the more important. War footing demanded greater efficiency in recording, categorising and analysing the results of surveillance, for example, and, where necessary, in arresting or otherwise disciplining larger sections of the citizenry than generally necessary in peacetime. Police monitoring of those perceived to have the potential to hinder the war effort went far beyond “Germans”, Maori and the left. It included large numbers of individuals who would generally be regarded as “respectable”, including those with ethical objections to participation in the conflict or people categorised as German who were actually from, say, Dalmatia or the Levant. The magnitude of the task of surveilling

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such a wide network can be gauged by the fact that settlers from German-speaking Europe had formed the second largest migrant stream into New Zealand after those from Britain.21 Police monitoring was complicated by the activities of ultra-patriotic “loyalist” associations like the Women’s Anti-German League. While such organisations contributed positively to the war effort, their activities could also be counter-productive by, among other things, creating disorder and disharmony.22 Loyalist activities could, for example, disillusion significant sectors of the population. These included the great majority of German descendants who were loyal to the British Empire, and many of their friends and neighbours, at the very time when social order and cohesion were paramount requirements for advancing the war effort. Mediating between the requirements of order and the demands of mobilised anti-Germans presented the police with difficult operational and strategic decisions, as well as consuming a great deal of their time. Police personnel needed to investigate all reports of suspicious activity— of people allegedly radio transmitting to Germany, of “German” neighbours behaving furtively and of night-time flashes believed to be naval signalling operations. Wellington’s Police Superintendent was speaking for many a policeman when, reporting on a “signal light” incident that was actually people enjoying an evening picnic, he noted that “this is a specimen of the will-o-wisps the police are frequently required to chase”, diverting them from their “really important duty”.23 Police refusal to arrest on the basis of claims alone meant that they often bore the brunt of loyalist allegations of state indulgence towards enemy aliens, naturalised Germans and others deemed suspicious because of their bloodlines. In a typical example of accusations of police softness towards “Germans”, “A Britisher” wrote to a Taranaki newspaper arguing that it was the “duty of the Government to [intern] all Germans in the police”: given “the proved treachery” of even naturalised Germans, “why have not the Commissioner of Police and the Minister of Justice done their duty?”24 Anti-Germanism, in fact, had the potential to challenge the very notion of social consent for policing, with many an allegation that the police were ceasing to act as servants of the patriotic public. Such feelings persisted in the face of much evidence that the political and police authorities were far from “soft”. Quite apart from the arrest of enemy military reservists, in fact, there was intense (and tightening) scrutiny and control of persons of German or Austro-Hungarian

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descent. For example, the police could detain anyone they suspected of sympathy for or collusion with the Central Powers, and internment camps were established on three islands. Important decision-makers, moreover, were inclined to equate people of German descent with disloyalty. Cullen himself conflated bloodlines and national loyalty: “I am satisfied that a German who goes through the form of getting naturalised does so merely to enable him to pose as a British subject so as to get employment, whilst he remains a German at heart just as much as he ever was”.25 All people of German birth or descent, in fact, were subject to a greater or lesser degree of official surveillance. Those seen to be in a position to damage the war effort by, for example, working in jobs with potential to damage national security, such as chemists or waterfront workers, could find their livelihoods in jeopardy.26 No spies or saboteurs were ever located, although loyalists often believed this to be due to police incompetence. Extreme patriotic circles went further, alleging sinister motives when constables concluded, on the basis of their knowledge of their communities, that individual enemy aliens or German descendants were neither dangerous nor disloyal. In Charleston, for example, Constable Richard Allan was publicly criticised for resisting an instruction to arrest “a most loyal fellow” who happened to be of German origin.27 Although his assessment prevailed because of support from significant parts of the local population, such cases fed ongoing allegations of leniency or even pro-enemy allegiance among the police. In particular, anti-German sentiment continued to be bolstered by incendiary propaganda from organisations and newspapers. This, and bad news from overseas—the casualties at Gallipoli, for example, or the sinking of the Lusitania—led to disorderly loyalist gatherings and even rioting. The police stressed that they would protect “Germans” and their properties from vigilantism and attack. But given the potential of anti-Germanism to threaten the concept of a peaceful and united home front, the authorities generally behaved cautiously towards loyalists who transgressed. Policemen showed little inclination to indict “respectable” anti-Germans who incited crowds, for example, and they were often content to make only token attempts to track down offenders in the disorder that sometimes followed. Local constables would normally have found no difficulty locating such distinctive characters as a very tall man “wearing

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no hat with very long curly hair parted in the centre”. But when such descriptions of rioters were circulated among police, few arrests were made. The links long built up between the police and members of the community were, on the other hand, used to generate a sufficient minimum of arrests to support their claim of showing “neither fear nor favour” in enforcing the law. The arrestees were generally from working-class, itinerant and marginalised sections of the population: a labourer “acting like a madman” in an attack on Wohnsiedler’s butchery or a prostitute “throwing missiles”.28 To help combat morale-lowering, anti-German hysteria, the police carefully cultivated their links with sectors of the community inclined to support (or which had a vested interest in supporting) the maintenance of order over and above patriotic effusions. The possible need to corral auxiliary help for the force, moreover, was monitored closely, especially when police were seemingly in danger of being overwhelmed by their duties. Such support could be mobilised officially when so required, by means such as the swearing in of “special constables”. When anti-German riots in both Gisborne and Wanganui were followed by simmering tensions and anonymous threats against citizens of German extraction, large numbers of citizens heeded the call to be sworn in as “specials”.29 Some campaigners argued for auxiliary policing to be formally established for the duration of the war. These included women’s groups that felt police numbers insufficient for such matters as protecting young women and soldiers in the context of a wartime loosening of morals. There were calls from some organisations for “women police patrols” to guard female virtue, protect soldiers from “fallen women” (and venereal disease) and discourage vice. But senior police felt that any kind of amateur policing, except in real emergencies, was unwise: the activities of the ill-trained enthusiast might well prove counter-productive to the maintenance of order.30 Again, it was all a question of balance.

Conclusions In the First World War there were multifaceted expectations placed on the NZPF from different communities, sectors of society and interest groups. Attempts to maintain its carefully cultivated links with each societal milieu sometimes clashed with the demands of both socially driven mobilisation for war and counter-mobilisation against government policies. Moreover, the essence of the policing role, the power to coerce in

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the interest of state policy, required frequent police intervention in the activities of those involved in both broad movements. State-led mobilisation for war, in other words, led to degrees of resentment and resistance among significant sections of the citizenry which criticised the police for being either too coercive or insufficiently so. Despite periodic accusations against the police from both opponents and supporters of state war policies, however, most of the time most communities retained their general support for the work and methods of the force. One riposte to the “venomous tirade” of “A Britisher” about alleged German fifth columnism within the police force, encapsulated such support: [The] well-known and highly popular police officer [of the] district … stands too high in the public esteem to be affected by this vicious attack. The fact of a man being of German descent does not always imply that he is a supporter of this swinish system of Prussian militarism which has brought misery to the world …31

Similarly vocal support for the police followed surveillance of, and crackdowns on, resistors to the war or its conduct. Widespread social consent in a time of emergency measures was assisted by continuation of the exercise of police discretion. This reflected broad governmental parameters which favoured persuasion above coercion, even when regulating wartime compliance and countering opposition to (or apathy toward) the war effort. Such parameters reflected the prevalent mode of social control which had evolved by 1914, based as it was on securing legitimation within most sectors of society. The general policy of targeting only specific communities, organisations and individuals for repressive or suppressive enforcement (and even then minimising use of the iron hand as far as possible) helped ensure much public cooperation with the NZPF at a time when its resources were heavily stretched. All the same, given the socially intrusive and repressive nature of wartime emergency measures, and the tensions and emotions generated by the war, the police had to work hard to maximise social consent. As a general war weariness set in, moreover, policemen needed to devote increasing amounts of time to shoring up enthusiasm—by disseminating official propaganda on expanding production, for example, or encouraging greater military volunteering. At a time when their duties as both

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coercers and cajolers of society stretched police resources, the active or passive assistance of much of the population helped them monitor the state of order and take action to pre-empt or respond to expressions of resistance, dissent or disillusion. Wartime had highlighted the centrality of the police to monitoring the population, applying coercion, and doing so in discretionary ways aimed at maximising social consent. Police efforts to maintain consent as far as possible in emergency conditions provided a firm platform for post-war resumption of the long-term policing trend towards the velvet glove policing that was seen to be the most suitable mode of social control in a stable and modernising society. Whenever public order was potentially or actually disturbed, the police and political authorities would readily employ the iron hand. But wartime surveillance had helped the NZPF find a balance between coercion and consent which generally worked well in interwar New Zealand.

Notes





1. For the New Zealand contribution to the war effort, see John Crawford and Ian McGibbon (eds.), New Zealand’s Great War: New Zealand, the Allies and the First World War, Auckland: Exisle Publishing, 2007; Steven Loveridge, Calls to Arms: New Zealand Society and Commitment to the Great War, Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2014; Steven Loveridge (ed.), New Zealand Society at War 1914–1918, Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2016. 2. Richard Hill, “State Servants and Social Beings: The Role of the New Zealand Police Force in the Great War”, in Steven Loveridge (ed.), New Zealand Society at War, pp. 91–111; Richard Hill, The Iron Hand in the Velvet Glove: The Modernisation of Policing in New Zealand 1886–1917, Wellington: Dunmore Press, 1994, pp. 341–361. 3. Richard Hill, “Policing Ireland, Policing Colonies: The Irish Constabulary ‘Model’”, in Angela McCarthy (ed.), Ireland in the World: Comparative, Transnational, and Personal Perspectives, New York and London: Routledge, 2015, pp. 61–80. For an example of a reference to French colonial formations (in this case, the Chasseurs d’Afrique) in debates relating to the “demilitarisation” of the Armed Constabulary, see Archives New Zealand [hereinafter ANZ], P1/1, “Wellington 1869”, Capt W. Handley to D. McLean, 10 August 1869 and Handley to J.D. Ormond, 11 August 1869.

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4.  For the frontier period, see Richard S. Hill, Policing the Colonial Frontier: The Theory and Practice of Coercive Social and Racial Control in New Zealand, 1767–1867, Wellington: Historical Publications Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, 1986 and The Colonial Frontier Tamed: New Zealand Policing in Transition, 1867–1886, Wellington: Historical Branch, Department of Internal Affairs, 1989; for a summary of New Zealand’s colonial policing history, see Richard Hill, “Adaptation et autochtonisation: application et raffinement des méthodes policières impériales dans la colonie de Nouvelle-Zélande, 1840–1907”, in Vincent Denis and Catherine Denys (eds.), Polices d’Empires: XVIIIe–XIXe siècles, Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2012, pp. 63–77. 5. Maxim One, “Maxims for General Guidance of the Members of the New Zealand Police Force”. These were displayed in every New Zealand police station: see frontispiece, Richard S. Hill, Policing the Colonial Frontier. See too Clive Emsley, The Great British Bobby: A History of British Policing from the 18th Century to the Present, London: Quercus, 2009. 6. J. O’Donovan, “Address to the New Zealand Police Force”, in The Police Force Act, 1913, Police Force Amendment Act, 1919, and Regulations Made Thereunder for the Guidance of the Police Force of New Zealand, Wellington: Government Printer, 1920, p. 5. 7. Appendices to the Journals of the House of Representatives, Wellington: New Zealand Government, 1914, H-16; there were an additional 23 part-time constables. 8. Alex Frame, Salmond: Southern Jurist, Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1995, p. 167. 9.  Richard S. Hill, “Cullen, John 1850?–1939”, in Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, vol. III, Wellington: Auckland University Press/ Department of Internal Affairs, 1996, pp. 125–127. 10. ANZ, R21371600-AAAB-478-3/s, “Expeditionary Force: Bad Characters”. 11.  ANZ, R21371603-AAAB-478-3/v, “EF [Expeditionary Force]: Deserters”. 12. Paul Baker, King and County Call: New Zealanders, Conscription and the Great War, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1988. 13. Steven Loveridge, Calls to Arms, pp. 136–170. 14. Jared Davidson, Dead Letters: Censorship and Subversion in New Zealand 1914–1920, Dunedin: Otago University Press, 2019. 15. Peter Franks and Jim McAloon, Labour: The New Zealand Labour Party 1916–2016, Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2016, pp. 72–73; Harry Holland, Armageddon or Calvary: The Conscientious Objectors of New Zealand and “The Process of Their Conversion”, Brooklyn [Wellington], 1919, p. 14.



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16. James Holt, Compulsory Arbitration in New Zealand: The First Forty Years, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1986, pp. 128–132. 17. Richard S. Hill, Iron Hand, pp. 341–343. In Hill’s 1979 interview with a First World War policeman, Arnold Butterworth, the former constable noted that “the police found it impossible to enforce anti-treating regulations so just ignored them”. 18. Peter Webster, Rua and the Maori Millennium, Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1979. 19. Paul Baker, King and Country, pp. 218–221. For Maori in the First World War see Monty Soutar, Whitiki! Whiti! Whiti! E!: Maori in the First World War, Auckland: David Bateman Ltd, 2019. 20. Richard Hill, Iron Hand, pp. 352–354. For comparative purposes, refer to John Horne, “Remobilizing for ‘Total War’”, in John Horne (ed.), State, Society and Mobilization in Europe During the First World War, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997, pp. 195–211. 21. James Belich, Paradise Reforged: A History of the New Zealanders From the 1880s to the Year 2000, Auckland: Allen Lane/The Penguin Press, 2001, pp. 224–225. 22. Andrew Francis, ‘To Be Truly British We Must Be Anti-German’: New Zealand, Enemy Aliens and the Great War Experience, New York: Peter Lang, 2012; Graham Hucker, “‘Bundling Out the Hun’: The Women’s Anti-German League during the First World War”, in Steven Loveridge, New Zealand Society at War. 23.  ANZ, R21371956-AAAB-478-10/t, “Signalling, Wellington Hospital” and “Signalling, Karori”. 24. ANZ, R21371635-AAAB-478-5/c, “Germans in Police Force”. 25. ANZ, R21371431-AAAB-478-11/am, “Wellington: Wharves: Aliens”. 26. ANZ, R21371539-AAAB-478-2/d, “Chemists, Enemy” and R3885352AAYS-8647-AD10-9-17/7, “Police Inquiries Re Aliens on Wharves, April”. 27. Richard Hill, Iron Hand, p. 350. 28. ANZ, R21371890-AAAB-478-12/aq, “Riot, Wanganui”. 29. ANZ, R21371640-AAAB-478-12/aq, “Gisborne Anti-German Riot” and R21371425-AAAB-478-11/ag, “Wanganui Riot”. 30. Richard Hill, Iron Hand, pp. 395–406; ANZ, R22430661-AAYS8638-AD1-779-24/83, “Personnel—Police—Employment of Women as”. 31. ANZ, R21371635-AAAB-478-5/c, “Germans in Police Force”.

CHAPTER 17

Police Askaris, Kaiserliche Landespolizisten and Leoleo: The German Colonial Police Forces in 1914–1915 Gerhard Wiechmann

Governed by a latecomer in European overseas expansion, German colonies—officially termed Schutzgebiete (protectorates)—were only 30 years old in 1914 (Table 17.1). The establishment of German rule was not always a peaceful process. In the case of Cameroon, Hoffmann stated in 2007 that it remained impossible to draw up a complete study of all the wars, campaigns and military expeditions in the colony owing to sheer numbers and a lack of corresponding research material.1 In nearly every protectorate, colonial rule was introduced by force and sometimes resisted by extensive uprisings, which are now considered—as in the case of the so-called Herero and Nama uprising of 1904–1905—as pertaining to a context of genocide.2 At first glance, it may seem astonishing that, after the loss of all colonies under the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, these 30 years of small wars, bush wars or guerrilla warfare

G. Wiechmann (*)  Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_17

243

244  G. WIECHMANN

Table 17.1  German colonies in 1914a Togo

Kamerun Deutsch-Südwestafrika Deutsch-Ostafrika Kiautschou Deutsch-Neuguinea

Deutsch-Samoa

West Africa (known as Togoland until 1905), established 1884 and later divided between French Togo (present-day Togo) and British Togoland (part of present-day Ghana) West Africa, established 1884 (present-day Cameroon) German South-West Africa, established 1884 (present-day Namibia) German East Africa, established 1889 (present-day Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi) Kiautschou Bay (southern Shandong province of China), established 1897 (present-day Jiao Zhou) German New Guinea, established 1899 (present-day Papua New Guinea). This included parts of the former Spanish East Indies like the Karolinen (Caroline Islands), the Marianen (present-day Federated States of Micronesia) and the Marshall Islands German Samoa, established 1900 (present-day Samoa)

aHorst Gründer, Geschichte der deutschen Kolonien, 6th revised and expanded edition, Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2012, pp. 121–235

operations—together with all the forces involved—were left nearly undocumented in German military history until as recently as the first decade of the twenty-first century.3 However, in the aftermath of the Great War, the efforts and resources of professional military historians in Germany were wholly devoted to covering the official military history of the war in Europe. No studies on war operations in the colonies ever saw the light of day, with the exception of one instance published in 19514 that was based on a personal manuscript from the author Ludwig Boell who had served in German East Africa. All available records are to this day buried deep within the Federal Military Archive in Freiburg im Breisgau (Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg i. Br.). The absence of even the smallest official publication on colonial police forces remains conspicuous. Only one unofficial work was published in 1930—again by a former member of the forces—concerning the Kaiserliche Landespolizei (Imperial State Police) in German South-West Africa.5 Germany’s general colonial history has itself remained underresearched over the decades. One reason for this is the short time period involved; another, the utter scarcity of source material after the bulk of Reichskolonialamt (Imperial Colonial Office) files were destroyed by an Allied air raid on Potsdam on 18 April 1945. The overall Reichsarchiv

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was massively damaged and the greater part of Prussian German military records simply reduced to ashes, including colonial military and police files.6 Only in the last 15 years have closer investigations been carried out regarding colonial military forces. These took the form of two dissertations, published almost at the same time, by Hoffmann and Bührer. They consider the Schutztruppen (protection forces) in Cameroon and German East Africa.7 While Bührer wrote only a short general description of police forces in relation to the Schutztruppen, Hoffmann only investigated them with regard to the first phase of colonial rule. Therefore, police forces were not the main subject in either work.8 These works have been supplemented by the only two major scientific investigations published so far:9 Morlang’s 2008 general overview of Schutztruppen and police forces and Zollmann’s 2010 in-depth exploration of the Kaiserliche Landespolizei in German South-West Africa. Both can now be regarded as standard works. An interesting article about the early phase of the Togo police force was also published by Glasman (2010).10 Finally, reference information about police structures is provided by Polizei and Polizeitruppen entries in the official Deutsches Kolonial-Lexikon (German colonial encyclopaedia), the editor of which was the last governor of German East Africa, Heinrich Schnee.11 As a work published by the Imperial Colonial Office in its dying days, it provides the official point of view of the colonial police system.12

German Colonies and Their General Administrative Framework The German colonies eventually obtained a ministry of their own in 1907, under the name of Reichskolonialamt (Imperial Colonial Office); one reason for its establishment was the series of disastrous uprisings against colonial rule in South-West Africa in 1904–1905 and East Africa in 1905–1906. Togo and the South Sea territories never had Schutztruppen but only police forces. They, like all the forces in the colonies, did not report to military command but fell under the jurisdiction of civil administration. Officially called “police soldiers” (Polizeisoldaten) or “police askaris” (in East Africa), these were never organised as a Gendarmerie in the sense of a militarised police force. A rare exception in this colonial system was the Chinese territory of

246  G. WIECHMANN

Kiautschou (Jiao Zhou) and its capital city of Tsingtau (Qingdao). As a Pachtgebiet (lease territory), it stood under direct control of the Reichsmarineamt (Imperial Naval Office). Nothing is known about its specific police system except that in 1914 the Chinesenpolizei (Chinese police) was comprised of 60 men, with its authority limited to the Chinese element of the population.13 The Schutztruppen were purely colonial troops without any relation to the regular armies of the kingdoms of Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony and Württemberg; they were therefore identified as a so-called Reichstruppe (Imperial forces), like naval infantry or the Elsaß-Lothringen Gendarmerie brigade in Alsace-Lorraine.14 With local responsibility for public order, ranging from standard duties to riot control, in every colony except the abovementioned territories comprised of only police forces, Schutztruppen in Cameroon and East Africa were created as mercenary forces relying on African recruits from outside the colony, for example, so-called Wey Boys from Liberia or Sudanese askaris. The East Africa Schutztruppen even adopted the Egyptian–Turkish military ranking system, that was also used by the local police force.15 In German South-West Africa, the only German settler colony, both Schutztruppen and Kaiserliche Landespolizei recruited only European personnel, although local police units did use indigenous auxiliary forces as Polizeidiener (police servants) mostly for scouting and horse handling. The longer colonial rule lasted, the more often personnel were recruited from the colony itself, thus rendering unnecessary the “import” of foreign African mercenaries. In the last years of German rule, further recruitment of police troops was imposed on every colony to relieve the Schutztruppen from police work, allowing them to concentrate on military training. In actual fact, Germany was never in possession of even the smallest form of colonial army, with no training depots, let alone preparation schools (even in the homeland). The only colonial military “reserves” were the three naval infantry battalions that had all been trained for special infantry and guard duties at the three naval bases of Kiel, Wilhelmshaven and Kiautschou. In the event of rebellion, the Schutztruppen were therefore unable to rely on any immediate support from home and had to handle “counter-insurgency” on their own. The only emergency support available was the use of three or four old gunboats, or sometimes a cruiser, from the WestAfrican and East-African naval stations at Duala and Dar es Salaam.16

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The German Colonial Police System Although an empire by name, the Reich never had a central police system, apart from the period between 1936/1937 and 1945. From 1871 to 1918, the 25 federal states each had their own police systems—mainly a Gendarmerie for policing the countryside and communal police forces for towns and cities. Since all colonies were governed by a central administration, colonial policing was therefore something new in German police history. Founded in 1907, the Kaiserliche Landespolizei DeutschSüdwestafrika was actually the first real German “central state” force combining the assignments of a rural Gendarmerie and those of an urban police force under unified command. Furthermore, this Landespolizei was not a militarised force like most Gendarmerie forces in Germany. In other respects, the colonial police system was more or less a copy of the homeland system. There was no division between purely executive police tasks, like those carried out by today’s Landespolizeien, and administrative tasks, currently assigned to local authorities. Colonies also had a Sicherheitspolizei (security police), forces responsible for political affairs, passports, press control and the circulation of individuals, and a Verwaltungs- or Wohlfahrtspolizei (administrative or welfare police), in charge of public health, construction and trade regulations, fire protection, rural affairs, forestry, hunting and fisheries, harbour controls and maritime and river policing.17 Exerting authority over these forces were local Gouverneur (governors), with rights to introduce bylaws and other regulations; the Bezirke or Distrikte (counties or districts) with their Bezirksamtmännern (senior civil servants) acting as chiefs; the various mountain and harbour bureaus; and the Ortspolizeibehörden (local police authorities) in towns and independent communities. Another key task in the context of colonial rule over natives was to maintain so-called Landfrieden (public peace) by combatting tribal feuds and internal unrest. Police forces were therefore responsible for punishing cases of high and state treason, resistance against state authority, riots and uprisings: During expeditions and in the case of any rebellion or attack, the expedition leader is authorised to institute summary proceedings against natives and to carry out death sentences immediately.18

In every German colony, police forces also provided the nucleus for the Schutztruppen that were introduced later.19 In 1892–1893, colonial administrators in the German Foreign Office realised that a split between

248  G. WIECHMANN Table 17.2  Staffing of the German colonial police forces (1913) Colony German East Africa German South-West Africa Cameroon Togo German New Guinea German Samoa Kiautschou

Officers

Non-commissioned officers

“Police soldiers”

4 16 4 2 0 0 0

57/149a

2140 50b 1255 550 839 20–25 60

432 37 ? 16 1 ?

aWhite/coloured bIndigenous police servants Data source DKL, Vol. 3, “Polizei” entry, p. 69ff., and “Polizeitruppen” entry, p. 71ff.

the newly created Schutztruppen and local police forces was actually necessary, and from 1896 onwards, the Schutztruppen were placed under the command of the navy while the three police forces in Cameroon, South-West Africa and East Africa became fully separated from them.20 Yet police units went on recruiting mercenaries just as the Schutztruppen did. Table 17.2 provides details of the colonial police forces and staff resources available in 1913. Regarding the Samoan “Leoleo” (policemen or watchmen in Samoan), their main task was the control of Chinese foreign workers; there was also a strong guard of honour comprised of 30 men—the so-called “Fitafita”—entrusted with a number of police duties. In case of rebellion, however, the German administration did not rely on them alone but also used Melanesians from the New Guinea force.21

German Police Forces in the First World War: German South-West Africa, Togo and German New Guinea Although the Landespolizei was not a militarised force, its members were mostly army reservists and were therefore mobilised into Schutztruppen at the outbreak of war in German South-West Africa. Since colonial administrators feared native rebellions as a result of war operations, the areas anticipated to be invaded by the Allies first were evacuated.22 Apparently strong resistance against such measures was suppressed by “stringent measures”, as Rafalski termed them in 1931, without any further explanation.23 Watering places that could serve the Allied forces

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were destroyed.24 There are no precise numbers available of how many Landespolizisten served in the wartime Schutztruppen—only a list of those killed in action, giving mention of 23 casualties (8 of whom died long after the surrender of July 1915).25 Combat operations started on 13 September 1914, as South African troops attacked the police station at Ramansdrift. When the town of Keetmanshoop was evacuated by the Schutztruppen on 19 April 1915, two Landespolizisten were left to prevent plundering and riots by the natives. The mutiny of the “Bastard Company” in April 1915 came as a severe blow to the colonial administration. The so-called “Bastards of Reheboth” had seemed to be a loyal tribe and a company had been recruited from them for police duties in August 1914 (although they were not intended to engage in any fighting against white Allied soldiers). However, after contact with South African General (and Prime Minister) Louis Botha (1862–1919), the “Bastard Company” rebelled and a number of Landespolizisten were killed in the following uprising.26 In contrast to Cameroon or German East Africa, the Schutztruppen in German South-West Africa resisted very little. The reason for this may be found in an exchange dated 2 July 1915 between the commander of the Schutztruppen and the region’s governor; Lieutenant-Colonel Victor Franke explained to Governor Dr Seitz what the bleak strategic perspective was and frankly stated that the situation, in tactical terms, would soon be hopeless. From a purely military point of view, further fighting was pointless and would create, in political terms, a disaster for the colonists in the event of an unconditional surrender. As early as 1920, German author Richard Henning suggested that the governor was afraid of a capitulation simply because he feared a harsh reaction from the Kaiser himself. Be that as it may, Seitz eventually agreed and German forces, including the Landespolizei, capitulated under favourable conditions granted by the treaty of Khorab signed on 9 July 1915:27 Policemen enlisted in the Schutztruppen shall be treated in the same manner as active regulars. Policemen on remote stations shall remain posted for the protection of the lives and property of non-combatants until they can be replaced by Union troops.28

Once such troops had arrived, Landespolizisten were interned in camp Aus until November 1915 after which they were released and many of them worked as farmhands. After the colony came under South African Union rule as a mandated territory in 1919, all of them were sent home

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to Germany. Most of them later served in newly founded government offices of the Weimar Republic or the Reichsbank—but not in other police forces. The Togo police force was the only one to fight in the war independently from the Schutztruppen, simply owing to its earlier militarisation. In 1910, a police reserve had indeed been created after the French model, which allowed for the doubling of staff numbers in the case an emergency, and the mobilisation of up to 1000 men. Yet despite the incorporation of such reserves, the campaign lasted only 3 weeks with French and English colonial troops invading Togo in early August 1914.29 The only valuable object to be defended in Togo was the brand new maritime shortwave radio transmitter at Kamina. This equipment allowed the Nauen transmitter station (circa 40 km west of Berlin) to contact stations in Cameroon and German South-West Africa as well as to send one-way messages to Dar es Salaam where they were forwarded to light cruiser SMS Königsberg in the Indian Ocean. From lack of transmission power, Dar es Salaam could only receive those messages, not answer them. Keeping open this vital line of communication to East Africa and SMS Königsberg was an absolute priority, especially since the cruiser was intended to raid Allied shipping routes between Aden and Cape Town.30 Police commander Major Hans Georg von Doering (1866–1921), who then happened to be the acting governor in the absence of the incumbent (on holiday in Germany), therefore decided to fight for as long as possible to defend the radio transmitter. After a skirmish on the banks of the Chra River on 22 August, he surrendered unconditionally on 25 August, but only after his troops had destroyed the Kamina station themselves. Morlang hints that the morale of these “police soldiers” was low and that the whole unit was plagued by desertions and insubordination. This seems very plausible since these policemen knew they were fighting for a lost cause. In fact, some of the war prisoners soon entered a newly established British police force in Togo, simply switching uniforms.31 However, as Lohse recalls, these men had never received any real military training to confront fighting professionals from other colonial powers and should not be judged too harshly.32 The only armed resistance against invading Allied troops in the South Sea happened in the Bismarck Archipelago on 11 September 1914, when Australian forces landed to seize the radio station under construction at Bitapaka. After about an hour of fighting, resulting in over 30 casualties

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among the Melanesian “police soldiers”, capitulation followed—this resistance was later given a nearly epic portrayal by a little-known work published in 1931 about “warriors on forgotten fronts”. Although the Australian expeditionary force lost only eight men in the skirmish, a much harder blow ensued on 14 September in nearby Blanche Bay: the loss of AE-1, the first Australian submarine to disappear without trace with all 35 men on board.33 Police forces in German East Africa and Cameroon were immediately integrated into the Schutztruppen. Unfortunately, no further published information about specific police involvement during that period is available. At any rate, this involvement seems to have ended with the very protracted fighting retreat of the Schutztruppen who eventually left Cameroon in February 1916 to be interned in Spanish Muni (Río Muni, present-day Equatorial Guinea), or with the crossing of troops led by Colonel Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck over the River Rovuma into Portuguese East Africa in November 1917. German colonial police forces thus seem to have left next no trace in German colonial history—let alone in the non-extant German colonial police history of this era. Even in a recently published exploration of colonial violence in Togo, the local police force fails to be mentioned at all.34 It is therefore no wonder that the only historical material available was written by former white members of the Landespolizei of German South-West Africa. Indeed, the Schutztruppen would not have been remembered if Lettow-Vorbeck had not fought to the last bullet in British Nyasaland, where he capitulated in November 1918—after Armistice in Europe.



Notes 1. Florian Hoffmann, Okkupation und Militärverwaltung in Kamerun, Teil 1: Etablierung und Institutionalisierung des kolonialen Gewaltmonopols, Göttingen: Cuvillier, 2007, p. 16. 2.  Jürgen Zimmerer and Joachim Zeller, Völkermord in DeutschSüdwestafrika: Der Kolonialkrieg (1904–1908) in Namaland und seine Folgen, Berlin: Christoph Links, 2016; Jonas Kreienbaum, “Koloniale Gewaltexzesse. Kolonialkriege um 1900”, in Alain Chatriot and Dieter Gosewinkel (eds.), Koloniale Politik und Praktiken Deutschlands und Frankreichs 1880–1962/Politiques et pratiques coloniales dans les empires allemands et français 1880–1962, Stuttgart: Steiner, 2010,

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pp. 155–172; Markus Pöhlmann, “Über die Kriegsverbrechen von 1914”, in Flavio Eichmann, Markus Pöhlmann and Dierk Walter (eds.), Globale Machtkonflikte und Kriege. Festschrift für Stig Förster zum 65. Geburtstag, Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 2016, pp. 125–144. 3. See, for instance, Matthias Rogg, Kompass Militärgeschichte. Ein historischer Überblick für Einsteiger, Freiburg i.Br./Berlin/Wien: Rombach, 2013, and Volker Neugebauer (ed.), Grundzüge der deutschen Militärgeschichte, two volumes, Freiburg: Rombach, 1993—in which German colonial wars are simply not mentioned. 4. Ludwig Boell, Die Operationen in Ost-Afrika: Weltkrieg 1914–1918, Hamburg: Dachert, 1951. 5. Ludwig Boell, Der Krieg in den deutschen Kolonien. Manuskripte, Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv [hereinafter BAMA] Freiburg i. Br.: Vols. 1 and 2; Kamerun (BAMA RH 61/44-45), Vol. 3; Deutsch Südwestafrika (BAMA RH 61/42), Vols. 4 and 5; Samoa, Neuguinea, Togo (BAMA RH 61/40-41), Vol. 6; Deutsch Südwestafrika (BAMA RH 61/43), Vol. 7; Kilimandscharo, Iringa, Mahenge (BAMA RH 61/1830); H[ans] Rafalski, Vom Niemandsland zum Ordnungsstaat. Geschichte der Kaiserlichen Landespolizei für Deutsch-Südwestafrika, Berlin: Emil Wernitz, 1930. 6. The Imperial Navy files, which survived the Second World War practically untouched in Tambach Castle (Bavaria), therefore often serve as a substitute—based on the fact that the navy itself played an important role in conquering and policing colonies from the start of colonial expansion until 1914. See, for instance, Walter Nuhn, Kolonialpolitik und Marine. Die Rolle der Kaiserlichen Marine bei der Gründung und Sicherung des deutschen Kolonialreiches 1884–1914, Bonn: Bernard & Graefe, 2002. However, Herold is right in stating that this naval role in the conquest and policing of German colonies has not hitherto been properly researched (Heiko Herold, Reichsgewalt bedeutet Seegewalt. Die Kreuzergeschwader der Kaiserlichen Marine als Instrument der deutschen Kolonial-und Weltpolitik 1885 bis 1901, Munich: Oldenbourg, 2012, p. 6). 7. Schutztruppen: the official name of the armed forces operating in the protectorates of Cameroon, German East Africa and German South-West Africa. These were never part of the Reichsheer or the Kaiserliche Marine and, in the first two decades, consisted mostly of African mercenaries from Sudan or West Africa (see below). 8. Tanja Bührer, Die Kaiserliche Schutztruppe für Deutsch-Ostafrika. Koloniale Sicherheitspolitik und transkulturelle Kriegführung, 1885 bis 1918, Munich: Oldenbourg, 2011, pp. 204–209; Florent Hoffmann, Okkupation und Militärverwaltung in Kamerun, pp. 71–87. A popular scientific overview on the subject is Alejandro de Quesada and Stephen

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253

Walsh’s Imperial German Colonial and Overseas Troops 1885–1918, Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2013. 9. About colonial policing in general, see also Jean-Pierre Bat and Nicolas Courtin (eds.), Maintenir l’ordre colonial. Afrique et Madagascar, XIXe– XXe siècles, Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2012; Emmanuel Blanchard, Marieke Bloembergen and Amandine Lauro (eds.), Policing in Colonial Empires: Cases, Connections, Boundaries (ca. 1850–1970), Bruxelles: Peter Lang, 2017; Georgina Sinclair, At the End of the Line: Colonial Policing and The Imperial Endgame, 1945–80, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006. 10. Thomas Morlang, Askari und Fitafita. ‘Farbige’ Söldner in den deutschen Kolonien, Berlin: Christoph Links, 2008; Jakob Zollmann, Koloniale Herrschaft und ihre Grenzen. Die Kolonialpolizei in DeutschSüdwestafrika 1894–1915, Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2010; Joël Glasman, “La troupe de police du Togo allemand. L’Ordre colonial entre discours et pratiques”, in Alain Chatriot and Dieter Gosewinkel (eds.), Koloniale Politik und Praktiken Deutschlands und Frankreichs 1880–1962, pp. 29–49. 11.  Heinrich Schnee (ed.), Deutsches Kolonial-Lexikon [herinafter DKL], 3 Vols., Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1920. Online version available at: http://www.ub.bildarchiv.dkg.uni-frankfurt.de/Bildarchiv/Lexikon/ lexikon.htm (1 March 2019). 12. “Polizei” entry in DKL, Vol. 3, p. 69ff. 13. Thomas Morlang, Askari und Fitafita, pp. 137–146. 14. See Edgar Graf von Matuschka, “Organisationsgeschichte des Heeres von 1890 bis 1918”, in Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt (ed.), Deutsche Militärgeschichte in sechs Bänden 1648–1939, Herrsching: Pawlak, 1983, Vol. V, pp. 157–279 (specifically p. 271ff.) 15.  Askari (soldier), Ombascha (corporal), Schausch (Unteroffizier = NCO), Sol (sergeant) and Effendi (officer in general). 16. The West African station covered the coastline from Gibraltar to Cape Town while the East African station covered the coastline from Cape Town to the Gulf of Aden. Cape Town was the logistical centre for both stations, where ships could be repaired and supplied. 17. “Polizei” entry, in DKL, Vol. III, p. 69 and passim. 18. “Auf Expeditionen kann vom Expeditionsführer im Falle eines Aufruhrs oder Überfalls ein Summarisches Verfahren gegen Eingeborene eingeleitet und sofort die Todesstrafe vollstreckt warden”, Ibid. 19. Jürgen Kraus and Thomas Müller, The German Colonial Troops from 1889 to 1918: History-Uniforms-Equipment, Vienna: Verlag Militaria, 2009. 20. Ibid.



254  G. WIECHMANN 21. Thomas Morlang, Askari und Fitafita, pp. 125–136. In Samoan “o fitafita o le malo” means “government soldiers”, p. 129. 22. Hans Rafalski, Vom Niemandsland zum Ordnungsstaat, p. 348f. 23. Ibid., p. 354. 24. Ibid., p. 356. 25. Ibid., p. 376f. 26. Ibid., pp. 362–365. 27. Richard Henning, Deutsch-Südwest im Weltkriege, Berlin: Süsserott, 1920, pp. 290–305. See also Dr Hans von Oelhafen, Der Feldzug in Südwest 1914/15, Berlin: Safari-Verlag, 1923, pp. 224–225. 28. The original extract from the treaty (von Oelhafen, p. 231) reads as follows: “8. Die bei der Schutztruppe eingezogenen Polizeibeamten werden wie die active Truppe behandelt. Die auf abgelegenen Stationen befindlichen Polizeibeamten verbleiben zum Schutz von Leben und Eigentum von Nicht-Kombattanten solange auf ihren Posten, bis sie durch Unionstruppen abgelöst warden”. 29. Peter Sebald, Die deutsche Kolonie Togo 1884–1914. Auswirkungen einer Kolonialherrschaft, Berlin: Christoph Links, 2013, pp. 173–181. 30. John Walter, Die Piraten des Kaisers. Deutsche Handelszerstörer 1914– 1918, Stuttgart: o.J., Motorbuch-Verlag/Arms & Armour, 1995 (Original edition: The Kaiser’s Pirates, London: Naval Institute Press, 1994), pp. 112–128. 31. Thomas Morlang, Askari und Fitafita, pp. 36–37. 32.  Volker Lohse, “Die deutsche Polizeitruppe für Togo und andere Sicherungskräfte im Schutzgebiet Togo (1886–1914)”, Mitteilungsblatt Traditionsverband ehemaliger Schutz- und Überseetruppen – Freunde der ehemaligen Schutzgebiete e.V., No. 96, 2011, pp. 5–63, here p. 48. 33.  See the “Deutsch-Neuguinea” chapter in Wolfgang Foerster (ed.), Kämpfer an vergessenen Fronten. Feldzugsbriefe, Kriegstagebücher und Berichte. Kolonialkrieg, Seekrieg, Luftkrieg, Spionage, Berlin: Neufeld und Heinius, 1931, pp. 203–210. The editor was an official of the Reichsarchiv and used material from the archive that was supposedly destroyed in 1945. Thomas Morlang, Die Polizeitruppe Deutsch-Neuguineas 1887–1914, p. 22f. Downloaded version (30 December 2016) from http://www.traditionsverband.de/download/pdf/polizeitruppe.pdf. 34. Rebecca Habermas, Skandal in Togo. Ein Kapitel deutscher Kolonialherrschaft, Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 2016, p. 50.

PART IV

The Aftermath of the War: Back to Peace-Time Policing

CHAPTER 18

The Russian Police in War and Revolution Jonathan Daly

Scholars have variously interpreted Russia’s police system. Richard Pipes, echoing perceptive contemporaries,1 discerned the emergence of a police state in the 1880s.2 Peter Waldron argues that pre-1917 Russian government authority and police power were radically decentralised and arbitrary. Police officials, in this view, escaped central control as ordinary people and revolutionary activists also often did.3 But perhaps Pipes was right that the direction towards a police state was already mapped out. It certainly was achieved in the post-revolutionary era.

The Police Before the War The Russian police were organised hierarchically with a deputy interior minister at its apex. Day-to-day oversight was exercised by the director of the Department of Police. On the eve of the war, the Department employed 92 civil servants and over 200 secret informants.4 Eight offices

J. Daly (*)  University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_18

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within the Department oversaw aspects of policing from secret surveillance to regular criminal detection. Clerks maintained a systematic filing system and a card catalogue containing one million entries. In addition, a Special Office (Osobyi otdel) focused on combating political subversion. It supervised an outpost in Paris, fronted by a registered private detective agency. At the provincial level, many agencies contributed to policing. A Gendarmerie, with 14,000 men,5 answered to the deputy interior Minister for Police. Nearly 9000 gendarmes policed railroad lines and stations. Most of the remainder were assigned to 67 provincial gendarme stations and 500 district (uezd) gendarme posts. Some 500 gendarmes in 3 gendarme stations (divizii) in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Warsaw helped maintain public order. Most of these personnel watched for unrest, only occasionally fighting crime. The regular police also formed a hierarchy. In rural Russia, a district chief (ispravnik) in each district supervised the work of several sergeants (uriadniki), a larger number of constables (stanovye pristavy) and some 40,000 rural guards (strazhniki).6 In each province, all the regular police answered to the provincial governor. A similar pyramid of officials policed urban areas, ranging from patrolman (gorodovye), to inspectors (nadzirateli), to captains (pristavy), all subordinated to the police chief, or city governor in larger cities. Their main job was fighting ordinary crime, though all were required on occasion to render assistance to the political police. On the eve of the war, there were some 80,000 policemen. Most regular police received only a few weeks’ training—far less than in the major European countries.7 As in Europe, the regular police had extensive administrative duties, like enforcing laws on taxation, prostitution and begging.8 The haughty attitude, arbitrary conduct and rough behaviour of the Russian police often alienated the population from the government. The most sophisticated regular police were criminal detective units (sysknye otdeleniia), operating in eight or nine cities and towns. Such units employed agents in numbers ranging from only a few to around a dozen, each of which received extensive training in the best practices of modern European policing.9 Such practices included increased training, a narrowing of police responsibilities, and a shift towards forensic expertise, involving photography, medical expertise, anthropometry, fingerprinting, document analysis and graphology. From 1907, police authorities in Russia published a weekly newspaper, Vestnik politsii (“The Police Messenger”), dedicated to professionalising

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the force. Russian police officials also regularly attended international congresses of criminologists and of police.10 A military counter-intelligence apparatus was created in 1910. Seven bureaus functioned in the borderland cities of Warsaw, Kiev, Vilna, Odessa, St. Petersburg, Irkutsk and Vladivostok. Their staff—gendarme and military officers—reported directly to local and central military authorities.11 The Okhrana, or political police, was the most influential police force.12 It consisted primarily of three security bureaus (okhrannye otdeleniia) in the two Imperial capitals and Warsaw, the gendarme stations, and the Special Section of the Department of Police. At the security bureaus, the heart of the system, between 9 and 14 gendarme officers, supported by a dozen clerks, oversaw operations. Their job, at each bureau, was to piece together information supplied primarily by several dozen plainclothes surveillants (filery) and between 50 and 100 secret informants (sekretnye sotrudniki). The surveillants, drawn primarily from among demobilised non-commissioned officers, were official employees and earned roughly the same wage as skilled workers, plus expenses. Their job was to secretly watch suspects and record their observations in notebooks.13 Secret informants, by contrast, were paid from secret funds according to the quality of their work, their proximity to leading revolutionary activists and the nature of the information furnished.14 A few star informants earned as much as governors. In 1913, 11 secret informants reported on Socialist Revolutionaries, 18 on Social Democrats, 13 on the student movement, 1 on anarchists and 4 on public organisations for the Moscow security bureau, which also had 41 auxiliary informants (vspomogatel’nye agenty) reporting on a wide variety of individuals and groups.15 (Informant lists for the St. Petersburg bureau have not been preserved.) The Okhrana leadership also received regular reports from postal officials who secretly intercepted and copied personal correspondence.16 Finally, each security bureau employed four or five dozen regular police inspectors (nadzirateli), who earned the same wages as surveillants, to serve as liaisons with the regular police and to conduct general surveillance, especially among university students and workers. The data from all these sources were recorded in logbooks.17 Thanks both to successful political police work and surging economic growth, the main revolutionary organisations were fairly weak on the eve of the war. It is true, however, that a strike movement had gained strength following the massacre of workers in the Lena goldfields in Siberia in April 1912. Also, both officials and journalists discerned a

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rising tide of criminality, often labelled “hooliganism”.18 But the central government felt sufficiently secure to gradually reduce the number of provinces subject to states of emergency to fewer than a half-dozen, including Moscow and St. Petersburg.19 (The higher level states of emergency remained in force nowhere in the Empire.)20 By the eve of the war, the regular police, especially detective units, had gained in professionalism. Civil rights were dramatically more guaranteed than just a couple of decades before, and both government and legislature advocated their expansion, through a proposed law on the inviolability of the person, though they could not agree on the specifics, and such a bill was never adopted. The political police, while intrusive by British or American standards, was relatively small and largely targeted revolutionary activists.

Policing in the War The declaration of war against Germany on 17 July 1914,21 rallied most of urban Russia to the cause of national defence. On July 20, martial law was imposed in most of the Empire’s western and southern provinces (26 in all).22 Military commanders were empowered “to forbid […] any assemblies whatever and to temporarily stop periodical publications”.23 The following day, governors received orders “to crush and annihilate” seditious activity.24 A few days later, a state of extraordinary security was imposed in all provinces that were under neither martial law nor a state of siege (osadnoe polozhenie).25 The war put intense pressure on the police. Hundreds if not thousands of policemen were drafted into, or voluntarily joined, the military. Hundreds more left their jobs for better pay in the defence industries or higher administration.26 Yet the range of tasks for which they bore responsibility dramatically increased, including supervising drafting stations, tightening passport controls and enforcing the ban on alcohol.27 Only the higher police, which now focused more on military espionage and counter-intelligence, remained at full strength. The number of gendarmes rose to nearly 16,000,28 and the Department of Police staff increased to 107,29 in part because a ninth office was created to oversee military intelligence. Special Section cryptographers worked on breaking codes.30 Lists of foreign subjects suspected of espionage were compiled.31 Both regular and political police carefully

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watched potentially subversive enemy aliens. As of December 1914, the police had placed 48,672 Germans, Austro-Hungarians and Turks under surveillance.32 The political police in the major cities continuously arrested revolutionary activists and broke up their organisations. In Moscow in 1915 alone, the security bureau arrested 441 political activists, including 210 Social Democrats and 29 Socialist Revolutionaries.33 Many more such arrests occurred in 1916.34 Given the important role public activists played in organisations like the War Industries Committees, the political police begin to deploy secret informants among them.35 The police also watched other population groups, from religious sectarians and Jews, to Ukrainians and Chinese, to military personnel and employees of charitable organisations and rural administrative institutions.36 Beginning in late 1914, senior officials grew worried about populist agitation against Germans and Jews. An order of 21 May 1915, warned police officials “to take the most decisive measures” to nip in the bud any anti-Jewish activity.37 Although the political police continuously decapitated the main revolutionary organisations, thousands of other activists worked intensively to spread anti-government and anti-dynasty propaganda, gradually undermining their legitimacy. As the war dragged on, popular and elite opinion grew negative. The political police could report truthfully on the near demise of the major revolutionary parties, but also on the souring of the popular mood. By the early autumn of 1916, the head of the political police in Moscow, A. P. Martynov, reported on the widespread rumours of administrative corruption, official malfeasance, and the influence of “dark forces” and treason in high places that had “spread insidiously through countless press accounts”.38 On 5 February, K. I. Globachev, the political police chief in Petrograd, warned of impending hunger riots that could lead to “the most horrible kind of anarchistic revolution”.39 As a strike movement gained strength, the Interior Minister warned in late December of a unification of opposition and revolutionary forces.40 Hundreds more arrests followed, but the strike movement swelled, troops mutinied, and in late February and early March 1917 the government and the dynasty collapsed.41 By 25 February, vengeful crowds began attacking policeman, many of whom stayed off the streets. Some were caught and killed. By 27 February, the entire police force of Petrograd had melted away.42

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Policing the Revolution In Petrograd, crowds sacked the security bureau and the gendarme station, pillaged court records, hunted down and killed policemen, ransacked the police department building, destroyed police stations and stormed jails and prisons, freeing thousands of prisoners. On 4 and 10 March, the newly formed Provisional Government abolished the security bureaus, the Department of Police and the gendarmerie; transferred gendarme officers and enlisted men to the regular army; and dismissed all governors and vice-governors, appointing as their replacements local political activists.43 The death penalty was repealed. Thousands of regular criminals, along with prisoners of conscience, were amnestied.44 The political police obviously could not stop the February Revolution, but the new government was left with almost no forces of order. A popular militia, under the auspices of the City Duma, was instituted on 3 March, but functioned only at the local level.45 Violence and crime gripped the streets of Petrograd,46 as well as other cities. In self-defence, workers formed red guards and worker militias.47 Ordinary people took the law into their own hands. In the summer, the Provisional Government tried to reassert its authority. On 2 August, for example, it empowered administrative officials to search, arrest, imprison and expel from Russia anyone “threatening the state defence, its internal security, and the liberty secured by the revolution”.48 Such powers were not used vigorously. By autumn, central authority had all but collapsed, which helped win support for the Bolsheviks—the only leaders who seemed ready to impose a new order. On 16 October, the Petrograd Soviet approved the creation of a Military Revolutionary Committee (Voenno-revoliutsionnyi komitet) for defence against German attack and domestic threats. It was dominated by Bolsheviks and served them in their bid to take power in late October. Having created a new government, the Bolsheviks ordered the disbandment of city militia organisations, the subordination of workers’ militias to the soviets and the creation of a Workers and Peasants Militia.49 This force, which rose to over 300,000 men during the civil war (1918– 1920), was unpopular, since part of its duties included confiscating grain and delivering military recruits.50 Criminal detective units were also re-established. During the first months of Soviet power, institutional chaos reigned. The democratically elected Constituent Assembly was shut down at gunpoint in early January. On 21 February, with the German Army

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penetrating Russian territory, the Bolsheviks declared the “socialist fatherland in danger” and transferred the government to Moscow. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March) put an end to the war but required giving up 1.3 million square miles of territory and 62 million people. Ad hoc police forces proliferated. From early November 1917 to February 1918, there was in Petrograd a Committee for Struggle against Pogroms. On 14 January 1918, Lenin proposed forming worker– peasant squads to search market places and root out grain “speculators”, with the power to shoot them on the spot.51 From late spring there was a Committee for Revolutionary Security (Okhrany) with 6000–7000 members in the second half of 1918.52 In Tver, and presumably elsewhere, “troikas”, or committees of three officials under the supervision of the provincial executive committee of the Soviet, apparently dramatically lowered the crime rate.53 Guided by “revolutionary conscience”, the troikas either shot suspected criminals on the spot or imposed community service. A Railroad Military Guard was instituted in July 1918 and attained 70,000 troops soon thereafter.54 A political police—the “All-Russian Emergency Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage”, or Cheka—which had been instituted on 7 December 1917, became central to Bolshevik governance. Communist officials repeatedly entreated party members to assist the Cheka as voluntary informants.55 Cheka leaders advocated recruiting party members in “all institutions”,56 making “conscious workers” into “active associates of the Cheka”57 and convincing peasants to assist with surveillance.58 The Cheka expanded rapidly; by June, its Moscow headquarters had 1000 employees.59 The Cheka adopted all the methods of the Okhrana. It deployed secret informants,60 even copying almost verbatim a tsarist handbook61; secretly intercepted personal telegraphic and postal correspondence62; and fielded plainclothes surveillants.63 As before 1917, directing secret informants was considered “the fundamental work of the Cheka”.64 Yet all these forms of surveillance were dramatically expanded, as was censorship.65 A big departure from Okhrana practice was the creation of armed Cheka troops in June 1918, whose number gradually expanded to nearly 140,000 in mid-1921—not counting over 94,000 border troops under Cheka control.66 There was an almost complete break in personnel. Aside from rumours swirling around former gendarme officer M. S. Komissarov,67 it seems that not a single pre-revolutionary political policeman served in the Cheka.68 Only a small number of regular

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policemen were permitted to join the militia, with most personnel being drawn from the peasantry.69 In May, the Bolsheviks declared war on the “peasant bourgeoisie”.70 Armed food-seizure units (prodovol’stvennye otriady) were sent to the countryside.71 Simultaneously, tens of thousands of armed Czechoslovak POWs rebelled against the Bolsheviks and took control of the TransSiberian Railroad. Thus, began the Russian Civil War. In the late spring and summer of 1918, provincial and district Chekas were created72 (in October 1919, they were instructed to carefully report on every aspect of society, intellectual life and government institutions).73 On 11 June, the Bolsheviks decreed the formation of Committees of Poor Peasants (kombedy), another rural police force. Four days later, a central Cheka “troika” headed by F. E. Dzerzhinskii was given the power to authorise the execution of criminal suspects.74 In July, both Left and Right Socialist Revolutionaries attempted rebellions, local Chekisty in the Ural region murdered a dozen members of the Imperial family (including the Emperor Nicholas and his wife and children), the Czechoslovak legion captured more eastern cities and the White Army consolidated its position in the south. In August, Lenin ordered local officials to “shoot plotters and hesitators”,75 and the government demanded the formation of worker brigades to seize grain and to arrest speculators.76 The civil war was heating up. On 30 August, left-wing terrorists assassinated the Petrograd Cheka chief M. S. Uritskii and attempted to kill Lenin himself. Thus, began the Red Terror. The Cheka shot hundreds of people.77 A Party instruction of 17 September ordered Cheka authorities to “shoot all counter-revolutionaries”.78 In November, Germany lost the war and had to return conquered Russian territory. Now, the civil war spilled over into Ukraine and other border areas. Special Sections (osobye otdely) of the Cheka were created for surveillance in the military.79 A flurry of directives empowered government agencies to execute people for such infractions as failing to clear snow from railroad tracks, damaging telegraph lines and stealing state property.80 During the civil war, the Cheka alone executed a minimum of several thousand people.81 By late 1919, the civil war was essentially over and in the early winter and spring of 1920 all agencies, except military revolutionary tribunals, were stripped of the power to impose capital punishment.82 Throughout the year, in part because of the war with Poland (April–October 1920), the military revolutionary tribunals issued 5757 death sentences.83

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On 4 November, the Cheka was given the power to apply capital punishment in districts under martial law. They shot at least 25,000 people in the Crimea, from which the White forces retreated, between late 1920 and the summer of 1921.84 Another target of the Cheka were peasant rebels, who became bolder once the civil war was over. Calling them “bandits”, Martin Latsis, a senior Cheka official, admitted that in in 1919 and 1920 the Cheka had shot up to 1450 people.85 In early 1921, worker protests broke out in Moscow, Petrograd and other cities. Thousands of Kronstadt sailors rebelled, demanding freedom of speech, assembly and labour organisation. Red Army forces assaulted the rebellion. Hundreds if not thousands were shot on the spot or left to die. Subsequently, 2103 were sentenced to execution, and thousands more exiled to labour camps in the north and south.86 Meanwhile, peasant uprisings continued to break out to the south and east of Moscow. In March through May, the authorities imposed a state of siege in many of these areas, which empowered the Cheka and other armed forces to shoot suspected rebels on the spot.87 Simultaneously, the Party proclaimed a New Economic Policy, which embodied some of the demands of the workers, soldiers and peasants, including the right to trade grain freely. Even so, in 1921, according to official statistics, 9701 people were executed by sentence of various courts, not counting military tribunals.88 The regime persecuted non-Bolshevik revolutionaries—Socialist Revolutionaries, anarchists, and Mensheviks especially—as well as religious leaders in 1922, but the incidence of capital punishment dramatically declined and remained relatively low until the late 1920s.89

Conclusions Peter Holquist has explained the escalation of violence in the early years of Bolshevik rule as a by-product of the violence of the World War. Massive repression in 1905–1907, he also contends, was a harbinger of the violence to come.90 Yet the suppression of the Revolution of 1905 was conducted entirely by military forces, just like the crushing of the Paris Commune in 1871. By contrast, early Bolshevik repression was spearheaded less by military forces than by the Cheka, which disposed of some 250,000 civilian and paramilitary forces at the end of the civil war,91 compared to at most 10,000 for the Okhrana. The Cheka put to death tens of thousands during the civil war; the Okhrana—not

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one person in 1905–1907 or 1914–1917. The Bolshevik state was also dramatically more intrusive, aimed at making all of society and the entire government apparatus open to state scrutiny. The differences were, thus, both quantitative and qualitative and stemmed from the Bolshevik project of radically transforming the country in ways that went against the interests of the majority of people. The Russian police before 1917 resembled the forces in continental Western Europe. The regular police bore multitudinous administrative responsibilities, though the specialised detective police grew more and more professional and focused on fighting crime. The political police force, while larger and more intrusive than in most, if not all, Western European countries, was relatively small and focused largely on combating revolutionary and terrorist activists. After 1917, the regular police grew larger than their pre-revolutionary counterparts but continued the same evolution towards specialisation in crime-fighting. The most dramatic discontinuity was effected by the political police. Although they employed many of the same methods (but essentially none of the same personnel), they expanded colossally in size and scope. The greatest expansion came with the collectivisation drive undertaken by Stalin starting in 1929. This policy aimed at subordinating the entire rural population to state control. It was, in the words of a team of Western and Russian scholars, a “war against the peasantry”.92 From that time, the political police became the main support of the Communist Party and the Soviet political system.



Notes

1. V.M. Gessen, Iskliuchitel’noe polozhenie, St. Petersburg: Pravo, 1908, p. 171. 2. Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Old Regime, London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1974, chapter 11. 3.  Peter Waldron, “States of Emergency: Autocracy and Extraordinary Legislation, 1881–1917”, Revolutionary Russia, Vol. 8, No. 1, June 1995, pp. 1–25. 4. Spisok lichnogo sostava, May 1912, Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi federatsii [hereinafter GARF], f. 102, op. 295, d. 15, l. 1 ob. 1. 5. Spisok obshchego sostava chinov Otdel’nogo korpusa zhandarmov, St. Petersburg: Tip. Shtaba Otd. korp. zhand., 1915. 6. Neil Weissman, “Regular Police in Tsarist Russia, 1900–1914”, Russian Review, Vol. 44, No. 1, January 1985, pp. 45–68.

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7. Raymond Fosdick, “European Police Systems”, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1915, pp. 28–38. 8. GARF, f. 102, D-5, 1914, d. 3, ch. 21, lit. a, l. 1. and d. 17, lit. b, ll. 1–2 ob. 9. R.S. Mulukaev, Politsiia v Rossii, XIX v.-nach. XX v., Nizhnii Novgorod: s.n., 1993, pp. 43, 76; “Politsiia”, in Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’, 82 Vols., St Petersburg: F.A. Brokgauz i I.A. Efron, 1890–1904, here Vol. 24, p. 333. 10. Louise McReynolds, Murder Most Russian: True Crime and Punishment in Late Imperial Russia, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2013, pp. 145–156. 11. GARF, f. 102, op. 316, 1909, d. 282, ll. 156–169. 12. Jonathan W. Daly, Autocracy Under Siege: Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1866–1905, DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1998; Id., The Watchful State: Security Police and Opposition in Russia, 1906– 1917, DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2004. 13. Instruktsiia po org. nar. (fil.) nabliudeniia, GARF, f. 102, op. 316, 1908, d. 540, ll. 183–191. 14. Instruktsiia Departamenta politsii po organizatsii i vedeniiu vnutrennego (agenturnogo) nabliudeniia, GARF, f. 102, op. 308a, d. 236, ll. 1–7. 15. “Spisok”, 1913, GARF, f. 102, op. 316, 1913, d. 200, ll. 16–17. 16. On perlustration, see V.S. Izmozik, “Chernye kabinety”: Istoria rossiiskoi perliustratsii, XVIII-nachalo XX veka, Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2015. 17. GARF, f. 102, op. 316, 1912, d. 202, prod. 2, l. 29. 18. Joan Neuberger, Hooliganism: Crime, Culture, and Power in St. Petersburg, 1900–1914, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. 19. “Perechen’”, 1911–1913, GARF, f. 102, op. 302, d. 8, ll. 1–10 ob., 21–28. 20. Jonathan W. Daly, “On the Significance of Emergency Legislation in Late Imperial Russia”, Slavic Review, Vol. 54, No. 3, Fall 1995, pp. 602–629. 21. All dates are Old Style until, January 1918. 22.  Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii pravitel’stva, St. Petersburg: Senatskaia tip., 1915 [hereinafter: SU], 20 July 1914, no. 189, art. 2053. 23.  “Deistviia pravitel’stva–imennye vysochaishie ukazy”, Pravo, No. 30, 1914, pp. 2289–2291. 24. Interior minister to governors, 21 July 1914, GARF, f. 215, op. 1, d. 174, l. 28. 25. SU, 25 July 1914, No. 199, art. 2075. 26.  A.F. Romanov, “Imperator Nikolai II i Ego Pravitel’stvo: Po dannym Chrezvychainoi Sledstvennoi Komissii”, Russkaia letopis’, No. 2, 1922, p. 29.

268  J. DALY 27.  Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv [hereinafter: RGIA], f. 1284, op. 250, d. 44, ll. 87–104 ob. 28.  A.A. Miroliubov, “Zhandermeriia”, in Otechestvennaia istoriia: Istoriia Rossii s drevneishikh vremen do 1917 goda: Entsiklopediia, Moscow: Bol’shaia rossiiskaia entsiklopediia, Vol. 2, 1994, p. 167. 29. Spisok chinov, 1916, GARF, f. 102, op. 295, d. 43, l. 22–28 ob. 30. Special Section Report, 30 July 1916, GARF, f. 102, op. 267, d. 43, ll. 47–49. 31. List of suspected spies, 1914, GARF, f. 102, op. 302, d. 438, ll. 1–71. 32. “Spisok mestnostei”, December 1914, GARF, f. 102, D-2, 1914, d. 102, l. 113. 33. Martynov Report, December 1915, GARF, f. 102, op. 316, 1916, d. 186, ll. 157–158. 34. Globachev to Vasil’ev, 2 January 1917, GARF, f. 102, OO, 1917, d. 5, ch. 57, l. 1. 35.  St. Petersburg Security Bureau Report, March 1916, GARF, f. 102, op. 316, 1915, d. 1, ch. 57, lit. d, l. 60. 36. Jonathan Daly, The Watchful State, pp. 168–169. 37. Police department to governors and political policemen, 21 May 1915, Zagranichnaia agentura, XIIId(1), folder 12, Hoover Institution Archives. 38. Martynov to Vasil’ev, 30 September 1916, GARF, f. 102, OO, 1916, d. 48, ch. 46, ll. 58–59 39. Petrograd Security Bureau Report, 5 February 1917, ibid., ll. 124–124 ob. 40. Protopopov to governors, 20 December 1916, GARF, f. 102, OO, 1916, d. 341, ll. 71–73. 41. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, The February Revolution, Petrograd, 1917: The End of the Tsarist Regime and the Birth of Dual Power, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017. 42. Jonathan Daly, The Watchful State, 201–206. 43. Zhurnal zasedanii Vremennogo pravitel’stva, 4, 10 and 18 March 1917, GARF, f. 1779, op. 2, d. 3, ll. 2, 3 ob., 25, 70. 44. V.A. Shishkin et al. (eds.), Petrograd na perelome epokh: Gorod i ego zhiteli v gody revoliutsii i grazhdanskoi voiny, St. Peterburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2000, p. 76. 45.  Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, “Gosudarstvennost’, Obshchestvennost’, and Klassovost’: Crime, Police, and the and the State in the Russian Revolution”, Canadian–American Slavic Studies, Vol. 35, No. 2–3, 2001, pp. 157–188. 46. Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, Crime and Punishment in the Russian Revolution: Mob Justice and Police in Petrograd, Cambridge, MA, and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2017.

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47.  Rex A. Wade, Red Guards and Workers’ Militias in the Russian Revolution, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984. 48. A.I. Galinovskii, “Zakliuchitel’noe postanovlenie”, GARF, f. 1467, op. 1, d. 396, ll. 288 ob.-89. 49. V.I. Musaev, Prestupnost’ v Petrograde v 1917–1921 gg. i bor’ba s nei, St. Petersburg: Dmitrii Bulanin, 2001, pp. 52–53. 50. Murray Frame, “State Expansion and the Criminal Investigation Militia During the Russian Civil War”, History, Vol. 98, No. 331, July 2013, pp. 406–427, here p. 414. 51. V.I. Lenin, “Proekt rezoliutsii”, in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 55 Vols., Fifth Edition, Moscow: Gos. izd. Politicheskoi literatury, Vol. 35, 1967– 1970, p. 312. 52. V.A. Shishkin et al. (eds.), Petrograd na perelome epokh, p. 85. 53.  V.A. Smirnov (ed.), Ot ChK do FSB: Dokumenty i materialy po istorii organov gosbezopasnosti Tverskogo kraia, 1918–1998, Tver’: Tverskoe oblastnoe knizhno-zhurnal’noe izd., 1998, p. 10. 54. George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981, p. 88. 55.  V.P. Naumov and A.A. Kosakovskii (eds.), Kronshtadt 1921, Moscow: Demokratiia, 1997, pp. 371–372. 56.  A.A. Kulakov et al. (eds.), Obshchestvo i vlast’: Rossiiskaia provintsiia-1980-e gody, 3 Vols., Moscow: Institut rossiiskoi istorii RAN, Vol. 1, 2002, p. 39. 57.  R.A. Aripov and N.Ia. Mil’shtein, Iz istorii organov gosbezopasnosti Uzbekistana: Dokumental’nye ocherki istorii 1917–1930 gg., Tashkent: Uzbekistan, 1967, p. 178. 58.  L.V. Gorokhova, S.S. Elizarova and L.N. Titov (eds.), Kazanskaia gubernskaia Chrezvychainaia komissiia (1917–1922): Sbornik dokumentov i materialov, Kazan’: Tatarskoe kn. izd-vo., 1989, p. 33. 59. George Leggett, The Cheka, p. 34. 60. V.S. Izmozik, Glaza i ushi rezhima: Gosudarstvennyi politicheskii kontrol’ za naseleniem sovetskoi Rossii v 1918–1928 godakh, St. Petersburg: Izd. Sankt-Peterburgskogo universiteta ekonomiki i finansov, 1995, p. 64. 61. Neobkhodimoe rukovodstvo dlia agentov Chrezvychainykh komissii (Volynia: Volynskaia Cheka, s.d.). Cf. “Instruktsiia Departamenta politsii po organizatsii i vedeniiu vnutrennego (agenturnogo) nabliudeniia”, 10 February 1907, GARF, f. 102, op. 308a, d. 236, ll. 1–7. 62. V.S. Izmozik, “Pervye sovetskie instruktsii po perliustratsii”, Minuvshee, No. 21, 1997, p. 158. 63. M.N. Petrov, VchK–OGPU: Pervoe desiatiletie (na materialakh SeveroZapada Rossii, Novgorod: Novgorodskii gos. universitet, 1995, p. 59.

270  J. DALY 64. E.I. Makarov et al. (eds.), Piterskie rabochie i “diktatura proletariata”, oktiabr’ 1917–1929: Ekonomicheskie konflikty i politicheskii protest: Sbornik dokumentov, St. Petersburg: BLITs, 2000, p. 231, note 6. 65. V.S. Izmozik, “Pervye sovetskie instruktsii”, p. 157. 66. George Leggett, The Cheka, pp. 95, 333. 67. Iain Lauchlan, Russian Hide-and-Seek: The Tsarist Secret Police in St. Petersburg, 1906–1914, Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2002, p. 293, note 44. 68. Jonathan Daly, The Watchful State, p. 218. 69. Louise I. Shelley, Policing Soviet Society: The Evolution of State Control, London and New York: Routledge, 1996, pp. 23–24. 70. A.Iu. Davydov, Nelegal’noe snabzhenie rossiiskogo naseleniia i vlast’, 1917– 1921 gg.: Meshochniki, St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2002. 71. S.A. Pavliuchenkov, Krest’ianskii Brest, ili predystoriia bol’shevistskogo NEPa, Moscow: Russkoe knigoizdatel’skoe tovarishchestvo, 1996, pp. 52–55. 72.  I.V. D’iakov, “VChK-GPU-NKVD: Struktura, dislokatsiia i kadry”, in V.E. Musikhin et al. (eds), Iz istorii viatskikh spetsluzhb i politsii (vtoraia polovina XIX-pervaia polovina XX vv.), Kirov: Triada–S, 1997, p. 101. 73. A.A. Kulakov et al. (eds.), Obshchestvo i vlast’, Vol. 1, pp. 81–82. See also A. Berelovich et al. (eds.), Sovetskaia derevnia glazami VchK-OGPU: Dokumenty i materialy, 4 Vols., Moscow: Rosspen, Vol. 1, 2000, p. 27. 74. A.L. Litvin, Krasnyi i belyi terror v Rossii, 1918–1922 gg., Kazan: Tatarskoe gazetno-zhurnal’noe izd., 1995, pp. 54–55. 75. A. Arutiunov, Dos’e Lenina bez retushi, Moscow: Veche, 1999, pp. 313–315. 76. A.Iu. Davydov, Nelegal’noe snabzhenie, pp. 209–210. 77. V.P. Portnov, VchK, 1917–1922, Moscow: Iuridicheskaia literatura, 1987, p. 52; A.L. Litvin, Krasnyi i belyi terror, p. 66. 78. Ezhenedel’nik chrezvychainykh komissii po bor’be s kontr-revolutsiei i spekulatsiei, No. 1, 22 September 1918, pp. 8–9. 79. A.A. Zdanovich, Stanovlenie i razvitie Osobogo otdela Vchk (1918–1919 gg.): Materialy k lektsii, Moscow, 2000. 80. S.K. Tsvigun et al. (eds.), V.I. Lenin i VChK: Sbornik dokumentov, 1917– 1922 gg., Moscow: Izd. Politicheskoi literatury, 1975, pp. 151–152, 163, 218–219. 81. A.L. Litvin, Krasnyi i belyi terror, p. 67. 82. D.L. Golinkov, Krushenie antisovetskogo podpol’ia v SSSR, 2 Vols., Moscow: Politicheskaia literatura, Vol. 2, 1978, pp. 9–10. 83. A.L. Litvin, Krasnyi i belyi terror, p. 47. 84. Ibid., pp. 75, 81.

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85. M.Ia. Latsis, Dva goda bor’by na vnutrennem fronte: Populiarnyi obzor, Moscow: Gos. izd., 1920, p. 70. 86. V.P. Naumov and A.A. Kosakovskii (eds.), Kronshtadtskaia tragediia 1921 goda, Voprosy istorii, No. 4, 1994, p. 10. 87. Vladimir N. Brovkin, Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War: Political Parties and Social Movements in Russia, 1918–1922, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 376. 88. V.A. Smirnov (ed.), Ot ChK, pp. 189–190. 89.  T.V. Tsarevskaia, “Prestuplenie i nakazanie: Paradoksy 20-x godov”, in Volobuev et al. (eds.), Revoliutsiia i chelovek: Byt, nravy, povedenie, moral’, Moscow: Institut rossiiskoi istorii RAN, 1997, p. 214. 90. Peter Holquist, “Violent Russia, Deadly Marxism? Russia in the Epoch of Violence, 1905–1921”, Kritika, Vol. 4, No. 3, Summer 2003, pp. 627–652. 91. George Leggett, The Cheka, p. 359. 92.  L ynne Viola et al. (eds.), The War Against the Peasantry, 1927–1930: The Tragedy of the Soviet Countryside, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005.

CHAPTER 19

Finding a New Balance: The Belgian Security System in the Aftermath of WWI Jonas Campion

Though perhaps less dramatic than the history of the conflict per se, the impact of WWI on the articulation of police systems in European countries is nevertheless of particular interest to understanding the progressive transformation of the state and its modes of regulation throughout the twentieth century. A reading of the impact of war on law enforcement forces may indeed allow one to revisit the history of public order and policies underpinning it while referring such periods of acute crisis to a different temporal continuum, probably related to the longterm rhythm of institutional change. Building on the “policing system” notion1 that lays particular stress on the plurality, dynamics and articulation of institutions in charge of police functions within the public space, this chapter will focus on the field of Belgium. My aim will be to understand how the war transformed the dynamics of security and forced the creation of a new balance answering the necessities of the hour, the will to modernise society and the re-appropriation of past debates.

J. Campion (*)  Institute of Historical Research of Septentrion (UMR CNRS 8529), Lille University, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_19

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The particular interest of the Belgian situation derives from a number of reasons. The traditional historical account,2 is that the country, in spite of its initial neutrality, was nearly totally occupied by German troops for 4 years. However, a small band of territory beyond the Yser River remained free; it concentrated the national institutions and somehow incarnated the legal and moral continuity of the realm. In geopolitical terms, the situation of the country was equally specific—submitted to several occupation regimes, surrounded by a neutral country (the Netherlands), an annexed country (Luxemburg) and belligerent countries (France, Germany but also, across the sea, Great Britain). In a socio-political perspective, the characteristics of the Belgian state also render particularly relevant a study of the impact of the conflict on its apprehension of security. Its structure was historically distinguished by a very high degree of municipal autonomy, including in the field of law enforcement.3 It is therefore interesting to examine how this autonomy came to be reshaped in the aftermath of the conflict, just as a stronger Belgium—unitary and centralised—was being promoted in reaction to the wartime centrifugal tendencies (fostered by the German Flamenpolitik) and to combat the inward-looking phenomenon of preference for local interests manifested as early as 1914. In the field of security institutions, Belgian society was also specific in its remarkable lack of change throughout the nineteenth century; in spite of real controversies among the judiciary, the higher echelons of police forces and politicians, no consensus had ever emerged to change the equilibrium of the repressive apparatus established at the time of independence. This equilibrium rested on principles of “pluralisation” and decentralisation of the apparatus, on the local control of police forces and on the widely shared fear of a secret and political police. Finally, the repressive approach was characterised by the preferential use of the “Civic Guard” (Garde civique, a middle-class citizens’ militia) and of the army to maintain law and order—while the Gendarmerie remained in this system a relatively less important institution with only limited assignments, territorial presence and budgetary resources.4 As security issues acquired a new significance in Belgium after 11 November 1918—with the repression of collaboration with the enemy, the on-going hardships of a shortage economy, the return of refugees, the presence of Allied armies, etc.—the joint effects of past specificities and past security experiences led to a necessary review of law and order institutions. This situation resulted in a new division of security

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assignments in the context of a society where public life was itself undergoing the changes of democratisation. The First World War and its aftermath thus represented times of crisis for police forces in Belgium but also a determining moment for a new perception of the rationales of order in the realm.

Police Forces and Society in Transition: Challenges, Difficulties and Opportunities Understanding the impact of WWI on the Belgian security system requires its integration into the context of the transformation of society at large. With obvious dialectics at work, societal challenges affect the definition of the organisation and functions of police forces while the latter directly influence the dynamics of social life. In November 1918, the war ends but the state of war remains legally enforced until September 1919. At the same time, a significant process of democratisation begins to alter Belgian public life,5 resulting in universal male suffrage, relative liberalisation of the right to strike and unionise and greater state intervention in the fields of economic activities and relations between workers and their employers. Society wishes to become more inclusive and thereby enlarges the remit of citizenship. In this transition period, a redefinition of the respective electoral weight and status of the various political forces also takes place. The socialist movement defending workers, that until the war had been perceived as the main risk factor to social stability,6 now appears as one of the main political forces in the country, on a par with the Catholic Party. The Parti Ouvrier Belge (Belgian Workers’ Party) becomes both a key player in local politics, with a greatly increased number of elected representatives, and a partner for government that can no longer be disqualified outright. Managing the risk from the “labouring classes” evolves towards hitherto unknown levels of tolerance as a new threat looms in the guise of the emerging Communist movement, characterised by both its radical and international nature. This new political situation also results in new modes of managing the channels of social protest, such as strikes and public demonstrations, requiring new resources and innovative solutions in the field of policing.7 In parallel with this redefinition of citizenship and its margins, which although initiated as early as 1918 took a long time to develop during the interwar years, Belgium also had to deal at the time of the Armistice

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with temporary factors having a real impact in the field of security. In fact, the country was facing something akin to an unprecedented vacuum, or at least a deficit, in terms of police forces. As a result of the invasion of August 1914, municipal police forces had been depleted and disorganised (numbers enrolled in the Belgian Army, individuals taking flight before the German advance, arrests by the occupying forces, etc.).8 Civic Guards had quickly been dissolved to avoid their assimilation to irregulars, and the army itself had abandoned its role in the field of administrative policing (maintenance and restoration of order). Except for the early days of the liberation when troops were exceptionally put in charge of policing assignments to protect individuals and property or prevent popular violence and acts of revenge,9 the Belgian Army never again ensured such missions. There were multiple causes for this change. Now celebrated as victorious, the army could hardly afford to take on policing assignments in which it might tarnish its public image via repressive tasks it was not organised to perform anyway. Politically, military repression of social protest movements had become unthinkable since the official narrative of Belgium at war celebrated unanimous patriotism: how could the heroes of the battle of the Yser ever come to intervene against the heroes of internal resistance? Finally, still on a war footing, the army was largely busy performing military missions, including those connected with the occupation of the Rhineland (1918–1929) and the Ruhr district (1923–1925).10 Only the Gendarmerie remained a possible option. As a military institution, it had followed the rest of Belgian forces retreating beyond the Yser River in the summer of 1914. It then went on acting in support of the army and incarnated national sovereignty by performing policing assignments in the remaining free districts of Belgium but also among Belgian exiles in France and Great Britain.11 A particular characteristic of the corps was that its numbers (around 4300 men) had remained roughly intact throughout the conflict.12 By the autumn of 1918, the Gendarmerie corps was therefore “uprooted” but not diminished when it had to return to its pre-war stations and resume its administrative and judicial policing missions across the whole kingdom. This process only took a few weeks and the corps was fully reinstalled by the end of 1918. Yet new challenges emerged, linked among other factors to wartime damage, so much so that the

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extension of its missions soon revealed the inadequacy of its organisational model that had remained largely unchanged from pre-war times.13 This overall disorganisation of the police became a pressing matter with the end of the conflict. It represented both a constraint for Belgian authorities (how would they be able to maintain law and order and exercise the fundamental missions of the state?) and a unique opportunity to introduce reforms. Coupled with the war-induced brutalisation of society and the tensions resulting from a shortage economy imposing rationing of essential commodities, this police vacuum led, even before the end of the occupation, to a considerable rise in crime across Belgium. This phenomenon was reinforced by the strike of Belgian magistrates, initiated at the beginning of 1918 for patriotic reasons but which paralysed the justice system and created a climate of insecurity with its only minimal repression of crimes and misdemeanours.14 As shown by judiciary statistics, by panicking voices in the press and among politicians and by the complaints of the population, a genuine wave of banditry, carried out by organised gangs, swept across the country.15 However real, the phenomenon also led to exaggerations. It ran parallel to the explosion of fraud and trading on the black market, worsened by the presence of Allied troops who acted both as clients and suppliers of goods to this illegal scene. As the burgomaster (mayor) of Mouscron—a town on the French border— complained in December 1918: “More than ever now, marauders and fraudsters are teeming on the territory of our town.” He therefore asked the Minister of the Interior to allow him to recruit auxiliary policemen to contain the problem.16 This was granted, and Gendarmerie reinforcements were sent to improve border control.17 The significance of the policing vacuum existing in Belgium was further amplified by the recent fields of intervention opened to the state, public authorities and their agents: food supplies, reconstruction, disarmament, economic stimulus, the return of refugees, reconstitution of military units and demobilisation of servicemen—all new missions to be managed by agents of the law. Fundamentally, such agents were involved in the indispensable restoration of the state. This included the incarceration of suspects, as mandated by a Legislative Order dated October 1918.18 This initial step in the repression of so-called incivisme (collaboration with a German occupier) allowed the authorities to arrest on an administrative basis any individual likely to represent a danger to

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the security of the nation. In cooperation with military, then civilian justice, police officers and gendarmes contributed to activities targeting the inciviques, that is, suspected traitors to their country.19 Faced with these new missions on top of their regular assignments, officers were often overwhelmed. Finally, the problem of insufficient policing in Belgium was deepened by widely shared fears of a moral collapse of society.20 Such fears were focused on two particular groups of the population: women and the young. “Re-moralisation” was now a priority. It took the shape of denunciation, tight control and ruthless repression of deviant behaviour via social means, in addition to the police and judiciary. This required large and sometimes specialised resources. In some respects, the resulting situation came close to meaning the end of liberalism in matters of security or at least the end of a restrictive definition of what police forces should and should not do. In this context of a moral panic, police forces caught in the play of supply and demand had to strike a difficult balance between what was expected and demanded of them and what was actually possible. Ultimately, the context and difficulties just described reveal a fundamentally weakened state. Though Belgian institutions were able to continue the struggle throughout the war and stood on their dignity as the legitimate incarnation of “poor little Belgium”, they nevertheless had to face the unprecedented questioning of the liberal and unitary model inherited from 1830 by a conjunction of centrifugal political and social forces. Furthermore, these institutions were forced to acknowledge their relative powerlessness and inadequacy in view of their assignments; normalizing public life and restarting the national economy under the difficult budgetary conditions of a ravaged country were vast, daunting tasks. As early as November 1918, difficulties in the so-called zones sinistrées21 (“disaster areas”)—of Flanders in particular—produced characteristic results. While officials urged the rehousing of inhabitants, they soon realised that this would only be possible—via the construction of temporary shelters—after security had been restored to such districts, precisely in areas where police forces were depleted and suffering from material impediments, such as the destruction of police infrastructures or the squatting of premises by civilians or refugees.22 Months would be required to break this vicious circle and achieve some degree of improvement.

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Reviewing the Troops of the “New” Police Apparatus The transformation of the Belgian security system in the aftermath of the war can only be properly understood within the framework of the socio-political context just described—one that was fraught with multiple problems. Between the notional dates of 1918 and 1920, a new balance gradually emerged, moving away from both the pre-war status quo and the long-term legacies of the nineteenth century. As demonstrated by an analysis of changes affecting the traditional incumbents of police functions, the situation evolved as a consequence of the suppression of a number of institutions, the redefinition of others and the perennial creation of more or less new corps. The short time span involved—itself a result of the conflict—thus tallies with the specific and much longer timeframe of general reform within the world of police institutions.23 Once the linchpin of public order maintenance in the nineteenth century, the Civic Guard would never be resurrected after its de facto suppression during the invasion in late 1914.24 The end of this “classbased” institution with half-military, half-police characteristics came with its official abolition in 1920, amid general indifference. This measure was essentially justified by the government on the basis of military considerations: [considering that] the recent ordeal suffered by our country has entailed – among other consequences – the disintegration of the Civic Guard; that guards are now deprived of equipment and weaponry and that militia recruitment has become precarious on account of new legal dispositions generalizing military service; it therefore appears that even after its reorganisation this institution would fail to bring suitable guaranties of its ability to perform its assignment.25

This measure marked the end of an understanding of security merging bourgeois values with the civic spirit. The old security definition must be understood as the protection of the interests and property of a social elite. More essentially, this measure contributed, via the new role given to the army, to the key moment after which a fundamental distinction was gradually imposed between military rationales and police strategies in the field of concrete public order practices. For many years, this meant the absence of intervention from any military-oriented institution

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without specific training to exercise administrative policing functions, with the Gendarmerie being the beneficiary of this clarification. A break with the past, both political and symbolic, had been established for good.26 The loi communale (municipal law) of 1836 giving burgomasters a key role in the enforcement of public order policies gave, at least in theory that is, the number one slot in Belgium to the municipal police forces. This legislative framework did not change much after WWI. In concrete reality, the situation of communal police forces remained in line with what had existed before the conflict. The importance and energy of such forces varied in accordance with each municipality and all remained limited by the constraints of available financial resources. They also suffered from a perception of police functions characterised by a traditional vision—mainly informal and personal—of relationships between law enforcers and citizens. In this context, central authority was far from representing an incentive force driving reform. It did not implement any new legislative framework forcing standardisation, modernisation or minimal improvement among the diversity of local institutions. On the contrary, the executive power was actually pleased with the situation which allowed it to give preference to national-level approaches of public order issues and left only a secondary role to municipal police forces under the orders of burgomasters. Post-war Belgium hardly acknowledged any minimal criteria for the organisation of municipal police forces. This resulted in a mosaic of forces with different structures, equipment and training and with wide variations in staff numbers and skill sets. Only large cities stood a cut above the rest. Very large ones (such as Brussels, Ghent, Antwerp or Liège) enjoyed sufficient numbers, adequate equipment and proper training; they even achieved a level of reputation, albeit sometimes exaggerated, that positioned them firmly on the international policing map.27 Yet those police forces were merely exceptions to the rule, concealing the often problematic general situation. Moreover, such “exemplary” forces continued to develop through the interwar years in the same manner they had at the end of the previous century. The internal specialisation of assignments was accelerated (vice squad, juvenile squad, canine squad, etc.) bringing some diversity to the hitherto dominant monolithic fusion of judicial and administrative functions. This was the consequence of several additional factors related to the long-term transformation of the urban context, to the symbolic political value of cities28 and to new fears

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that had emerged in the post-war era. In this perspective, the changes intervening within municipal police forces can be read both as the outcome of past controversies and as the direct impact of the war experience—entailing reforms that resolved unprecedented circumstances or a recycling of reforms that had been previously imposed by occupying forces.29 Although municipal policing in urban districts was of little interest, the situation was different in rural districts. Worse than municipal police forces were the gardes-champêtres (rural policemen), who proved to be, if available at all, very mediocre policemen who were unable to repress crime or even simply report it to judiciary authorities. The particular living (or survival) conditions imposed by the war had only accentuated this well-known deficiency.30 It was therefore no surprise when the issue of reforming rural policing came to feature prominently several times on the post-war political and professional agenda. All agreed that the reality of rural districts meant that populations were badly protected or not protected at all. The terms of this debate must, once again, be referred to both the recent conflict (shortages, obsession with food, an inward-looking preference for local interests and a lack of national cohesion) and a framework that was now out of step with changing Belgian society, that is, concentrating on the rural nature of the country without taking into account the consequences of runaway urbanisation that had resulted from the industrial revolution. Faced with those security challenges, some suggested the creation of a new rural police force while others suggested increasing the number of rural rangers and improving their training.31 In the end, few changes really took place. The issue of rural policing was allowed to run its natural course and lost much of its urgency after Gendarmerie forces were reinforced and after the effects of reconstruction and economic recovery began to soften the perception of insufficient rural policing. Ever-present in the readjustment of police forces within Belgian society, the Gendarmerie belonged to the category of institutions under review. It quickly benefited from favourable attention on the part of state authorities, if only because the institutional tie between the two had never been broken by the war. Within liberated Belgium, the late 1918 reinstatement of Gendarmerie forces on the old model dating back to 1914 soon proved inadequate in view of the situation and of governmental ambitions for the corps. Progressive reorganisation therefore began to be implemented from 1919 onwards. Total theoretical numbers went

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up from 4900 men in 1918 to 6000 in August 1919 and 6800 in 1921. Budgets also went up and the overall change affecting the Gendarmerie was characterised by dynamics of human and material reinforcement, specialisation and modernisation (with motorisation, greater fighting strength and improved communications), while preserving the military nature of the institution. This military nature brought guaranties of loyalty, professionalism and independence from local political forces and the corps was quickly considered as number one asset driving national authority. To territorial brigades, forming a nationwide grid across the country (including roads, railway lines, waterways and rural districts), were added mobile units in charge of maintaining and restoring order in the vital economic centres of the realm.32 The striking element in this process is the capacity of the Gendarmerie’s general staff to act as an institution. This phenomenon was noticeable as early as 1917 when commanders already performed lobbying to promote their opinions about the preparation of their return to Belgian territory.33 In spite of expected tensions with the army, of which it still formed a part, and supervisory authorities, the Gendarmerie was able to defend—building on its strength, unity and presence in all policing theatres—a very definite point of view blending political, professional and tactical considerations. As early as the end of the conflict, the Gendarmerie thus carried a specific, articulate and audible discourse, stating that it was now indispensable and that it intended to make this fact known to all interested parties.34 Finally, the war had allowed for the birth of new policing or security institutions. Among the first to appear was the surêté militaire belge (Belgian military intelligence), in charge of intelligence, counter-intelligence and army security.35 Born out of the improvisation of the early months of war, it was formally organised in 1915 for the whole duration of hostilities. Given its assignments, its fields of intervention and methods did not necessarily belong to policing functions. Some of its members, but not all of them, were in fact mobilised policemen. Again, this new body was typical of the hybridisation between policing, security and military assignments in times of war or crisis; at least during its early years of existence, it stood at the crossroads between various domains. While its official existence was not supposed to last beyond 30 September 1919, Belgian military intelligence first took part in the liberation of the country, then contributed to border surveillance and later became involved in the repression of treasonous activities or so-called

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crimes contre la sûreté de l’État (crimes against the security of the state). Thus “reinvented” out of necessity, it also took part in the occupation of German territories as early as 1919. As an exceptional institution on the margins of a traditional security system, its permanence was not obviously justified, and numerous criticisms were levelled at it from a society gradually returning to peacetime standards. It found itself frequently at odds with the justice system and with other police institutions, so much so that a number of elected politicians soon asked for it to be disbanded, pleading for a return to normality and an end to the use of exceptional measures which military intelligence incarnated.36 More importantly, the after-war period saw the creation of a new and lasting body, exclusively devoted to the judicial policing function. Directly reporting to the office of the Procureur du roi (public prosecutor), the PJP or police judiciaire près les Parquets (“judicial police” specialising in criminal investigations) was officially instituted by legislation passed in April 1919, becoming effective in August. Its remit was limited but specialised. It could rely on theoretical numbers of 250 officers across all of Belgium (with Brussels taking nearly half that number), but recruitment remained a matter of opportunity, mostly governed in concrete terms by budgetary constraints: only 150 officers had been employed by the end of 1920.37 PJP officers nevertheless proved to be very active in the repression of ordinary crime, in the gathering of political intelligence and, in the early months, the fight against so-called incivisme. The creation of the PJP was carried through parliament by the Socialist Minister of Justice Émile Vandervelde without raising intense controversy. On the contrary, debates were consensual38 and integrated into the wider dynamics of reform targeting the justice and penitentiary systems.39 The policing issues involved, like the specialised approach to crime repression, were treated as only secondary matters. The contrast is in fact very striking between this climate of 1920 and the permanent reluctance to change throughout the nineteenth century, during which numerous projects, inquiries and parliamentary debates had never come to the concrete establishment of a police force specifically devoted to criminal investigation. On the contrary, such a force would then have been considered an unwelcome innovation, perhaps a dangerous and essentially political tool. The impact of the security crisis resulting from the war was now clearly at work, more so since the efficiency of this specialisation had been demonstrated during the occupation. A number of

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local parquets (prosecution services), for example, the prosecutor’s office in Dinant, had indeed used it with some success to remedy depleted numbers among traditional police institutions by recruiting temporary auxiliaries exclusively put in charge of criminal investigations. New police organs thus appeared in post-1918 Belgium. Two major observations must be made. On the one hand, these organs reshaped the distribution of policing functions, thereby planting the seeds of new forms of competition. The exercise of the judicial policing function is a revealing example: the function was exercised by a new police, reporting exclusively to the public prosecutor’s office but also by specialised brigades within some municipal police forces; also to a certain extent by military intelligence and finally by the Gendarmerie as well. A balance therefore had to be found for this mix, regarding the respective remit of each player. On the other hand, it would be simplistic to consider this situation only in the perspective of clean breaks via the creation from scratch of new police forces. In reality, a study of the profiles of police officers reveals some degree of kinship or at least hybridisation between the old and new forces. Hypothetically, such transfers would be bound to create an opposition based not on functions but on the intrinsic identities of the various police forces. This opposition would divide civilian police forces, even those temporarily militarised during wartime, from essentially military police forces. From 1915 onwards, staff from municipal police forces were mobilised and enrolled into military intelligence; equally, military intelligence officers joined the judicial police in 1919, together with the “best elements” from municipal forces.40 A common ancestry was shared. The situation invites us to a more nuanced consideration of such clean breaks and forms of competition between Belgian police, at least in their initial phases. Personnel transfers also lead us to consider the loss of skills among municipal forces having been “despoiled” of valuable officers. On the contrary, the strength of Gendarmerie forces remained immune since its officers, still full-fledged military men in the service of a robust military institution at the heart of public order policies, were only anecdotally involved in these transfers. These facts raise the question of the socialisation of officers and of the progressive creation of specific professional identities. They also raise the question of possible transfers of methods and investigation practices between police institutions leading to a shared policing expertise. Promoted by Minister Vandervelde, the creation in 1920–1921 of a

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“Criminology and Forensic Police School” in Brussels must be read both as a sign of the will to professionalise and modernise policing techniques and also to create a networking institution. Although this school was far from answering all expectations, it did serve as a melting pot or socialisation hub for Belgian police officers, most of whom were civilians.41

Conclusions: From “Suspended Time” to a New Era The facts are unquestionably clear: the 1914–1920 time span represented a period when the articulation and definition of policing functions and security patterns were reshaped in Belgium. This transformative sequence may be read as the first major change in the long-term history of policing since the independence of the country. As a total societal crisis, the conflict had undoubtedly forced a review of order maintenance rationales and practices to answer unprecedented quandaries as well as persisting past problems. While WWI resulted in a redefinition of Belgian democracy, it also served as a moment of revelation, experimentation and acceleration of the necessity to rethink about policing at large. In the aftermath of the conflict, the Belgian police apparatus remained a diverse system, refusing any centralisation or unification of forces. A number of institutions within this apparatus, the Gendarmerie in particular, acquired specific roles. The apparatus was also characterised by dynamics of specialisation both within and between the various corps. Faced with a changing society and a world in which communications were becoming faster, police forces modernised; an interest for new technological resources gradually emerged within them, as well as an understanding of the necessity—for both administrative and judicial policing—to develop new forms of mobility within the public space and real professional, technical and forensic expertise. Finally, the post-war apparatus was characterised by a redefinition of its geographic presence. Through the invasion and the reorganisation that followed the liberation of 1918, police officers were subjected to unprecedented levels of mobility and had to rethink their territorial distribution beyond traditional pre-war frameworks. Progressively, policing came to be understood beyond the narrow boundaries of local districts and municipalities. Nationwide policing appeared and acquired prominence through the rise of the Gendarmerie and its mobile units as well as through the creation of the PJP. Ultimately, it can be asserted that in the aftermath of WWI Belgian police mutated and gradually moved from the logical patterns of the

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nineteenth century to those of the twentieth century. During this extended transition process, war represented both an accelerating factor and a parenthetical period of suspended time. Three main observations should be borne in mind. First, the necessity to relate policing transformations with social transformations must be recalled. The post-conflict period in Belgium can defined both in terms of a security crisis, characterised by unprecedented tension and attacks on property (a contextual phenomenon) and in terms of the democratisation of social life redefining the notion of risk together with the role of the state and public authorities (a more fundamental, long-term phenomenon). Police forces were compelled to seize the opportunities of this new deal, in order to both adapt and try to influence it. Second, it remains certain that political stakes were involved at the heart of this post-war reorganisation, be it on a national or municipal level. During the interwar years, the electoral rise of Socialists—in local institutions in particular—may explain the will of the government to limit as much as possible the role of municipal police forces in the maintenance of law and order. For a proper understanding of the new balance within the Belgian security system, the electoral balance of power between Catholics, Liberals and Socialists cannot be ignored. Finally, the analysis of the security apparatus reveals a number of oppositions similar to those structuring Belgian society: tensions between the unitary central state and supporters of stronger local autonomy; tensions between rural districts with a Catholic majority, Socialist industrial heartlands and cities with a Liberal predominance; tensions resulting from the underlying linguistic issue affecting forces with a nationwide presence and, lastly, tensions between the military and civilian nature of police forces, which also bears relation to the overall issue of the space granted to working and grass-roots classes within society.

Notes

1. Clive Emsley, “La légitimité de la police anglaise: une perspective historique comparée”, Déviance et Société, Vol. 13, No. 1, 1989, pp. 23–34; René Lévy, “Du bon usage des modèles de police. Point de vue sociologique et point de vue historique, à propos de The policing web, de Jean-Paul Brodeur”, Champ pénal – Penal Field, Vol. IX, 2012, https:// champpenal.revues.org/8269 (20 May 2016). See also research publications from the ANR Syspoe network (Systèmes policiers européens, 18e–19e siècles), coordinated by Vincent Denis (Paris I University). More information available at http://syspoe.hypotheses.org/ (20 May 2016).

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2. The existing bibliography on Belgium and WWI is obviously considerable; for a comprehensive summary understanding, one should refer to Sophie de Schaepdrijver’s still up to date work La Belgique et la Première Guerre mondiale, Bruxelles: Peter Lang, 2004. 3. As determined by the so-called “loi communale” law dated 30 March 1836 governing municipal powers. 4. Jonas Campion, Margo De Koster, Luc Keunings, Benoît Majerus, Xavier Rousseaux and François Welter, “L’appareil policier en Belgique (1830– 2010)”, in Margo De Koster, Dirk Heirbaut and Xavier Rousseaux (eds.), Tweehonderd Jaar Justitie. Historische encyclopedie van de Belgische Justitie. Deux siècles de justice. Encyclopédie historique de la justice belge, Brugge: Die Keure/La Charte, 2015, pp. 385–419. 5. For general studies of the socio-political history of Belgium, see Xavier Mabille, Nouvelle histoire politique de la Belgique, Bruxelles: Crisp, 2011; Pascal Delwit, La vie politique en Belgique de 1839 à nos jours, Bruxelles: Éditions de l’ULB, 2010. 6.  As late as 1913, the Belgian Workers’ Party (Parti ouvrier belge) had organised a general strike demanding full universal suffrage without any limitation. Cf. Luc Keunings, “Ordre public et peur du rouge au XIXe siècle. La police, les socialistes et les anarchistes à Bruxelles (1886–1914)”, Revue belge d’histoire contemporaine, Vol. 25, Nos. 3–4, 1994/1995, pp. 39–52; José Gotovich and Pascal Delwit (eds.), La peur du rouge, Bruxelles: Éditions de l’ULB, 1996. 7. See Luc Keunings, “La dynamique des manifestations violentes à Bruxelles au XIXe siècle. Une analyse des troubles d’avril 1893”, in Ginette Kurgan-Van Hentenryk (ed.), Un pays si tranquille. La violence en Belgique au XIXe siècle, Bruxelles: Éditions de l’ULB, 1999, pp. 197– 240; Jonas Campion, “Gendarmes Facing Political Violence (Belgium, 1918–1940)”, in Chris Millington and Kevin Passmore (eds.), Political Violence and Democracy in Western Europe, 1918–1940, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp. 160–173. 8. As demonstrated by Benoit Majerus concerning Brussels. From 803 privates and officers in July 1914, police numbers in the city went down to 504 in September of the same year, reaching 638 in February 1917. Cf. Benoît Majerus, Occupations et logiques policières. La police bruxelloise en 1914–1918 et 1940–1945, Bruxelles: Académie Royale de Belgique, 2008, pp. 24–25. 9. As in Mons, for instance. See Guillaume Baclin’s research, in particular “Violences populaires et justice militaire: la répression de l’incivisme en Hainaut (novembre 1918–mai 1919)”, in Amandine Dumont, Amandine Thiry, Jonas Campion and Xavier Rousseaux (eds.), Mons dans la tourmente. Justice et société à l’épreuve des guerres mondiales, Louvainla-Neuve: Presses Universitaires de Louvain, 2016, pp. 53–55.

288  J. CAMPION 10. These were occupation situations where, confronted with a conquered enemy, the army suffers a hybridisation of its missions and becomes something merged between a military, police and security force. See Anne Godfroid, “Occupation After the War (Belgium and France)”, in Encyclopedia 1914–1918 Online, http://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/occupation_after_the_war_belgium_and_france (24 May 2016); Benoît Amez and Jérôme De Brouwer, “L’assassinat du lieutenant Graff: l’après-guerre et les difficultés du retour à la normalité pénale et judiciaire (1922–1923)”, in Marie Houllemare and Philippe Nivet (eds.), Justice et Guerre. De l’Antiquité à la Première Guerre mondiale, Amiens: Encrage, 2011, pp. 259–270. 11. Jonas Campion, “Militaires, prévôts et policiers: les multiples tâches des gendarmes belges autour de la Grande Guerre”, Revue de la gendarmerie nationale, No. 252, March 2015, pp. 53–61. 12. Brussels, Musée Royal de l’Armée [Royal Army Museum], Fonds Moscou [hereinafter MRA, Moscou], ref. 5537-185 14a 7236, note No. 207/m from the General Staff, 14 October 1918. 13. MRA, Moscou, ref. 4002-185 14a 2118, Campagne 1914–1918, corps de gendarmerie Historique, February 1920; Brussels, Service historique de la police [Police Archive Services] [hereinafter SHP], registre de correspondance, brigade de Framerie, 1918–1921 (Mons district), ref. 1403, entries 11 February 1919 and 4 January 1919; Annales parlementaires, Chambre [Parliamentary debates, minutes of the Chamber of Representatives], sessions held on February 12, 26 and 27, 1919; MRA, Moscou, ref. 5533-185 14a 7223, Letter from the Minister of War to the Minister of the Interior, 24 Juny 1919. 14. Mélanie Bost, Traverser l’Occupation – 1914–1918: du modus vivendi à la grève, la magistrature belge face aux occupants allemands, PhD (UCL), 2013, pp. 324–376. 15.  Xavier Rousseaux and Toon Vrints, “La répression étatique d’un phénomène de crise sociale. Le banditisme pendant et après la Première Guerre mondiale en Belgique”, in Pierre-Alain Tallier and Patrick Nefors (eds.), Quand les canons se taisent/En toen zweggen de kanonnen/When the Guns Fall Silent, Bruxelles: AGR, 2010, pp. 271–303; Xavier Rousseaux, Pieter Leloup and Toon Vrints, “Banditry in Occupied and Liberated Belgium, 1914–1921: Social Practises and State Reactions”, Social History, Vol. 39, No. 1, 2014, pp. 83–105. 16. MRA, Moscou, ref. 5537, 185 14a, 7236, Letter from the Governor of Western Flanders to the Municipal Administration in Mouscron, 1 December 1918. 17.  MRA, Moscou, ref. 5537, 185 14a, 7236, Note No. 5752 from the Gendarmerie General Staff, 19 December 1918.

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18.  Concerning the scope of this Legislative Order (later resurrected in September 1944), see Georges Cassart, L’internement des suspects et des étrangers: arrêté loi du 12 octobre 1918 et son application en 1944, Bruxelles: Larcier, 1944. 19. Concerning these issues, see Xavier Rousseaux and Laurence Van Ypersele (eds.), La Patrie crie vengeance! La répression des inciviques belges au sortir de la guerre 1914–1918, Bruxelles: Le Cri, 2008. 20. Those fears are evidenced in all forms of public discourse during this period and within all circles: politicians, magistrates, experts, unionists and businessmen. Among other sources, see Aurore François, Guerres et délinquance juvénile: un demi-siècle de pratiques judicaires et institutionnelles envers des mineurs en difficulté (1912–1950), Brugge: La Charte/Die Keure, 2011; Christine Machiels, Les Féminismes et la prostitution (1860–1960), Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2016, pp. 101–142. 21.  Such was the standard phrase at the time. Cf. Parliamentary debates, minutes of the Chamber of Representatives, session held on 6 February 1919. 22. Parliamentary debates, minutes of the Chamber of Representatives, session held on 12 February 1919. 23. Concerning the issue of the pace of transformations, see the pioneering study by Cyrille Fijnaut, Opdat de macht en toevlucht zij? Een historische studie van het politieapparaat als een politieke instelling, Antwerpen and Arnhem: Kluwer Academic, 1979, as well as my own “En perpétuelles réformes? Réflexions historiennes sur la transformation de la Police en Belgique”, in Jonas Campion (ed.), Organiser, innover, agir. Réformer et adapter les polices en Belgique (18e–21e siècles), Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses universitaires de Louvain, 2017, pp. 11–34. 24. Piet Veldeman, “Trapped in a Legal No-Man’s Land? The Extraordinary Case of the Belgian Civic Guard in 1914”, in Margo De Koster, Dirk Luyten and Xavier Rousseaux (eds.), Justice in Wartime and Revolutions, Europe 1795–1950/Justice en temps de guerre et révolutions, Europe, 1795– 1950, Bruxelles: AGR and Just-his.be, 2012, pp. 355–363. 25.  Quoted in Parliamentary Debates, Minutes of the Chamber of Representatives, Revision of the Constitution, Government Proposal Concerning the Revision of Art. 122 of the Constitution, 10 June 1982, p. 3. Available at http://www.dekamer.be/digidoc/OCR/K2034/K203 40266/K20340266.PDF (26 May 2016). 26. In this perspective, the recent return of army involvement to carry out security assignments in the public space, as a result of terrorist attacks, marks a major change in Belgium. Concerning the issue, see Jonas Campion, “Militaire actoren en accenten in de veiligheidszorg in

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twintigste-eeuws België”, Tijdschrift voor Criminologie, Vol. 57, No. 4, 2015, pp. 396–410. 27.  See in particular Laurent López, “Terrorisme, banditisme, récidive … Genèse de la question d’une coopération policière européenne (France, Belgique, Luxembourg et Suisse, fin XIXe – début XXe siècle)”, in Jonas Campion (ed.), Organiser, innover, agir, pp. 49–65. More generally, concerning the emergence of this “international policing map”, see professional reviews and journals of the interwar years. For Belgium, ample evidence of this trend is to be found in articles published in the Revue belge de police administrative et judiciaire. 28. Pierre Bergel and Vincent Milliot (eds.), La ville en ébullition. Sociétés urbaines à l’épreuve, Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2014. 29. The case of Brussels—both exemplary and exceptional owing to the status of the city as the capital—is probably the one best studied so far. See research publications from Luc Keunings and Benoit Majerus. More generally, see Jan Naerts’s forthcoming PhD (UGent) focused on wartime burgomasters, bound to bring new contributions to the understanding of public order policies. 30. Georges Terlinden, Mercuriale prononcée par le procureur général Georges Terlinden à la cour de cassation le 2 octobre 1911 sur le Projet de loi sur la Réorganisation de la Police, Bruxelles: Larcier, 1911; Jules Detroz, Mercuriale prononcée par le procureur général Jules Detroz à la cour d’appel de Liège le 1er octobre 1893 sur les gardes champêtres (Titre II, Chapitre II, du Code rural belge), Liège: Aug. Desoer, 1893. 31. Parliamentary debates, minutes of the Chamber of Representatives, session held on 8 June 1920 and 1 March 1992. See also “Essai sur la réorganisation de la police rurale et locale”, Revue belge de police, June– September 1922. 32.  MRA, Moscou, ref. 1358 1825 14 3307, Note No. 5991 from the General Staff, 21 November 1930. 33. MRA, Moscou, ref. 5537-185 14a 7236. 34.  Jonas Campion, “Vers un ‘État dans l’État’? La gendarmerie belge, d’une sortie de guerre à l’autre (1918–1957)”, in Arnaud-Dominique Houte and Jean-Noël Luc (eds.), Les gendarmeries dans le monde, de la Révolution française à nos jours, Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris Sorbonne, 2016, pp. 173–185. 35. Marc Cools, Patrick Leroy, Robin Libert et al. (eds.), Het verhaal van de Belgische militaire inlichtingen en veiligheidsdienst. L’histoire du service de renseignement militaire et de sécurité belge, 1915–2015, Anvers: Maklu, 2015. 36. In a speech to the Chamber, the Socialist representative Jules Destrée denounced both the misuse of traditional civilian institutions and the new

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institution created during the war: “We must return to standard practice, to the normal regime of rights to which we were accustomed; everything under the name of ‘secret police’ or ‘military intelligence’ must disappear, so that we may from on now have firm guaranties to escape the arbitrary decisions the current situation allows” (Parliamentary debates, minutes of the Chamber of Representatives, session held on 16 April 1919). 37. Concerning the early activities of the judicial police, see François Welter, “Quand l’intérêt institutionnel se heurte aux obstacles institutionnels et matériels. Une police judiciaire près les Parquets, solution aux défis de la police judiciaire en Belgique (1830–1922)”, Cahiers d’histoire du temps présent, No. 24, 2011, pp. 35–63. Full text available: http://www.cegesoma.be/docs/media/chtp_beg/chtp_24/chtp24_002_Welter.pdf. 38. Concerning the situation in the aftermath of the conflict, see Jean Servais, La police judiciaire des Parquets. Discours prononcé devant la cour d’Appel de Bruxelles à l’audience solennelle de rentrée du 1er octobre 1921, Bruxelles: Bruylant, 1921. The situation did not lead to heated exchanges in 1919 because such debates had already taken place before the war, see in particular Alexis Callier, “Mercuriale prononcée par le procureur général Alexis Callier à la cour d’appel de Gand le 1er octobre 1912 sur la réforme de la Police Judiciaire”, Journal des tribunaux, No. 2582, 1912, pp. 937–948. 39.  Brice De Ruyver, De strafrechtelijke politiek gevoerd onder de socialistische Ministers van Justitie E. Vandervelde, P. Vermeylen en A. Vranckx, Antwerpen: Kluwer Academic, 1988; Janet Polasky, The Democratic Socialism of émile Vandervelde. Between Reform and Revolution, Oxford and Washington, DC: Berg, 1995. 40. François Welter, “Quand l’intérêt institutionnel se heurte aux obstacles institutionnels et matériels. Une police judiciaire près les Parquets, solution aux défis de la police judiciaire en Belgique (1830–1922)”. 41.  Although a number of gendarmes also attended courses. Yet the Gendarmerie Corps always maintained an ambiguous attitude towards this school. On this subject, see already published results from David Somer’s forthcoming PhD (UCL): David Somer, “The Criminology and Forensic Police School: The Twofold Project to Humanise Judicial Practice and to Implement Technical Police in Belgium”, in Jonas Campion and Xavier Rousseaux (eds.), Policing New Risks in Modern European History, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, pp. 36–56.

CHAPTER 20

A War Without an End: French Gendarmes and the Post-conflict Process (1918–1921) Romain Pécout

Victory has crowned the flags of the Allied and our conquered enemy has requested an armistice. In strictly military terms, the era of war operations appears to be at an end. […] Although the fighting is over, your assignment is certainly not; it may become even more demanding.1

Thus did Major General Laguiche, head of the French Military Mission to the British Army, address all members of his unit—mostly constabulary gendarmes—in a general order dated November 1918. In a public speech dated 8 March 1918, Minister of War Georges Clemenceau had himself promised that he would pursue hostilities “down to the final quarter of an hour” for Allied forces to win.2 Was it now time to say “mission accomplished”? Not quite yet, Laguiche seemed to tell his men. For gendarmes, the tasks ahead after the Armistice of 11 November were more daunting in scope than the general mobilisation in the summer of 1914. Over recent years, historical understanding of the complex nature of the post-conflict process at the end of the Great War has greatly benefited

R. Pécout (*)  Sorbonne University, Paris, France © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_20

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from research work such as that of Bruno Cabane and Nicolas Beaupré.3 Their perspectives can be applied to the history of security forces in order to discern how the Gendarmerie institution transitioned from wartime assignments to peacetime duties.4 In fact, determining a precise moment in time to close this process still proves difficult and Nicolas Beaupré is certainly right in questioning the traditional chronological approach relying on “periods” or “key dates” and in underlining the mistaken assumptions such a reliance is bound to create.5 Is it actually wise to set final calendar boundaries for any conflict when distinctions between the features of a society “at war” and features of the same society “at peace” cannot be as clear-cut as such binary phrases suggest? Even in military terms, the Great War did not end on 11 November 1918.6 The temporary suspension of hostilities meant that demobilised soldiers might still be ordered to take arms and fight again. Though 1919 was officially acknowledged by French state administrations as the year when the war ended, it did not mark the end of war-related Gendarmerie interventions. A better choice would probably be 1921, a year that saw the Gendarmerie enter the dynamics of the interwar years with the reduction of post-war social unrest and the final demobilisation of the 1919 draft year cohort. Analysing the part played by the Gendarmerie in the exit stages of the war therefore involves broader issues than the history of the French security apparatus. The ability of this military force to return to its customary peacetime assignments while its wartime assignments at the front were still needed, not to mention its wholly new assignments, must also be investigated over a period extending far beyond the “textbook end” of the Great War. We must examine to what extent and in which official, or sometimes surprisingly unofficial, capacity this corps or Arme7 contributed to the post-conflict process. Yet this chapter will not expound on the missions—already widely covered elsewhere by other historians—assigned to the Gendarmerie from the very beginning of the conflict, having been prepared long beforehand and still being carried out with more or less efficiency towards its end,8 for example, surveillance and maintenance of discipline (not only among French troops but also British9 and American10), management of enemy and French prisoners of war and the policing of railway stations. Information to be found in the various archives is of varying quality, sometimes full and accurate but often very scant since the written production left to us by Gendarmerie officers was generally more extensive while the conflict lasted. This compels any historian to perform a difficult

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reconstruction, akin to the restoration of a mosaic using countless small squares: decrees, administrative circulars, mission orders, registers and minutes from various Gendarmerie brigades and constabularies. In geographical terms, my research in this chapter is also limited to areas liberated from German occupation; very specific, these areas allow for a much more meaningful analysis of return-to-peace phenomena since they suffered extensive damage and had experienced events hitherto unknown—things never studied before from the point of view of Gendarmerie involvement.

Ending the War and the Challenges of the Armistice As the Allied armies marched towards the Franco-German border, Gendarmerie forces had to retrieve the equipment abandoned or illegally transferred to municipal authorities, or even sold to private individuals,11 by the retreating German military authorities. Surveillance duties in this field also applied to Allied equipment and included all assets, even vagrant animals. As late as October 1920, a scrap iron dump was discovered by Corporal Bauduy,12 who puzzled over whether its location meant it actually belonged to French or British forces! Gendarmes ultimately had to gather stockpiles inside their own barracks before they were conveyed to larger gun parks such as the one at Verdun.13 The risks involved were considerable, whether in terms of potential attacks from criminals or potential accidents. In one instance, a trail of flames—identified as being of accidental origin by a Gendarmerie investigation—thus caused the destruction of 12 railway trucks parked on the tracks of the Charleville-Givet line, fortunately no casualties were recorded.14 Dangerous items were often left at completely forgotten locations, some of which were discovered in the most unlikely of places, like the three grenades found in the local school library at Saint-Martinau-Laërt.15 Thefts were so frequent that gendarmes could not efficiently prevent the dispersion of weapons. Soldiers on leave would very often take home from the front a wide array of ammunitions, grenades and other fully assembled or dismantled weapons.16 The mass transit of demobilised men did not help facilitate the checks and seizures of such equipment. Gendarmes soon had to face dangerous individuals in possession of explosives or military weapons, leading to life-or-death situations in spite of a return to peacetime. Such situations became even more difficult when the individuals involved proved to be veterans against whom the state could not be seen to act too severely.

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Maintaining order and discipline among some 5 million combatants, that is, preventing them from getting drunk, stealing from military stockpiles and deserting, remained the greatest challenge to all Gendarmerie units—both territorial and constabulary (prévôts). At the same time, territorial units were also involved in the demobilisation process. In every département, the Gendarmerie had to oversee the liberation from military duties of specific categories of men: hospitalised and convalescent servicemen, those on temporary deferment17 and those to be demobilised while on leave before returning to their units which facilitated administrative procedures. There were also men en situation définitive, that is, permanent deferment, men mobilised for factory work and many other special cases creating frequent opportunities for administrative errors on the part of the sometimes-overwhelmed gendarmes. A number of deferred conscripts, for instance, were directed to the wrong demobilisation depots, leading to unnecessary travelling back and forth.18 Likewise, men mobilised for factory work were often so numerous that Gendarmerie brigades could not demobilise them all at the same time. Furthermore, soldiers often mislaid their military passbooks and pay-books, which then had to be sent to them again via their unit commander or the Gendarmerie. Such papers were not just a formality but, in the case of military passbooks especially, an absolute requirement to perform demobilisation since the passbook evidenced the year of conscription and thereby duration of service. Such administrative scrutiny of servicemen, paper chases and related investigations, on sometimes very specific details, were all time-consuming and obviously created an inflated amount of correspondence.19

Restoring Public Service to Ravaged Areas—With a Definite Lack of Resources Gendarmerie brigades gradually returned to regions liberated from German occupation after 11 November. In the Ardennes, all brigades of the Rocroi division were back in their former premises as early as 16 November 1918.20 The maintenance of law and order was a priority for such areas where the local population did not have sufficient food supplies and where infrastructure was often damaged or destroyed. Most barracks themselves were in a parlous state after German troops had used them as prisons21 or for garrison purposes. Nearly all had been systematically vandalised or plundered.22 A report indicates that out of the nine

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barracks in the Rocroi district, four were inhabitable, one was in a very poor condition and four could possibly be used to welcome gendarmes and their families but only after extensive refurbishmen “as soon as circumstances may allow”, that is, realistically speaking, in the far-distant future.23 A number of gendarmes and their families thus found themselves forced to live outside their barracks in housing that was hard to find. As they retreated, German troops had indeed burned down countless buildings in towns and villages lying in their path.24 Even when deemed inhabitable, most of the remaining barracks were in desperate need of repair,25 reflecting the complete absence of upkeep during the war. Damage to infrastructure also included damaged roads, which represented a considerable impediment to Gendarmerie forces, greatly increasing their reaction times. In a context where fit horses had become a rarity, bicycles became the ideal means of transportation recommended by the hierarchy—just as it once had been in the days of the Belle Époque.26 Staff numbers added to material difficulties; not only were staffing levels low but some gendarmes went off duty for personal reasons, that is, to reunite with family members living in the same district, with whom they had lost contact during the German occupation.27 Likewise, others originating locally applied for special leave in order to visit their own pre-war homes or property, assess damage and fill in the necessary paperwork for compensation.28 Availability of staff was therefore uncertain, compelling brigade commanders to ask for reinforcements.29 Authorities answered such requests by transferring personnel but regularly had to compensate elsewhere by calling in volunteers to act within army constabularies positioned in foreign theatres.30 The idea of serving in recently liberated areas was hardly an attractive proposition and gendarmes stationed in those districts were not always properly trained to carry out what was expected of them locally. In his monthly report on regular operations and services, the commander of the Varloteaux brigade lamented the corresponding difficulties: Owing to lack of personnel, service is organised as best we can but remains very slow and with wide scope for improvement. There is no second in command and I must do everything myself as head of this brigade; my only assistant is a young gendarme who never had any judicial experience and therefore cannot act as investigating officer; without any specific training - and without much basic schooling either –, he’s a somewhat slow learner and – despite his best efforts – doesn’t seem to make any progress.31

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In those ravaged areas, the consequences of war included an inflation of the prices of all goods, so much so that personal effects (e.g., regulation shirts) became far more costly for gendarmes and achieved nothing like pre-war quality.32 Yet it seems that no special compensation was actually paid until 1920. At the same time, brigade registers very often underline noticeable differences with the material situation of civilians. According to such register entries, the wages of other state employees would be 50–100% higher than Gendarmerie wages, in spite of their much tougher working conditions. Some gendarmes even became inclined to leave the force altogether to get more lucrative employment. It was thus reported by the Montdidier division that “over the last seven months in our district, two gendarmes have left—one to become a postman, the other to become a garde champêtre (game warden)”.33 The material situation of gendarmes in those recently liberated areas was, it would seem, worse than it had been before the war and worsened in particular as a consequence of the burden of debt many had contracted simply to maintain their families.34

Return to Peace and the Management of Civilian Populations In his Le Réveil des morts, novelist and veteran Roland Dorgelès describes the equivalent of a French “Wild West” where foreigners from all continents mingle with populations in distress among the ruins of bombed out towns and villages—a fair description of what liberated areas looked like.35 Food supplies were scant and general hygiene deplorable. While Nicolas Beaupré underlines that the extent of destruction varied according to district and that local populations were not necessarily as greedy and violent as Dorgelès depicts, the need to restore order and security was unquestionable. Yet the disorganised state of Gendarmerie forces in those districts contributed to public fear. The presence of many Russians36 and Indochinese,37 together with an influx of other foreign workers, especially Italian and Portuguese, having come to help with reconstruction, did frighten local inhabitants in spite of the rapid creation of “temporary surveillance stations”. The French government even came to allow the creation of a local “special police” with a specific assignment to “maintain law and order while regular police forces are being reorganised and reinforced”.38 However, although Gendarmerie

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registers do report occasional brawls between locals and foreigners, gendarmes noting such incidents tended to rather underline the peacefulness of most “exotic workers”. Once reconstruction work was complete, Gendarmerie brigades were thus keen to recommend the suppression of “temporary surveillance stations” as soon as workers had left. Another security issue soon emerged in this context where members of the newly formed French Communist Party were highly suspected of having followed Moscow’s instructions in terms of deciding to resort to “illegal action”.39 Acts of sabotage directed against the military were reported in the years from 1919 to 1921. Although most investigations were carried out by special agents from the Ministry of the Interior’s Sûreté Générale (criminal investigation division) rather than by local forces, gendarmes were definitely present at the location of most such incidents and in charge of interrogating witnesses. Perpetrators proved to be mostly reckless young men, yet more serious forms of social unrest came to be feared by military authorities on Labour Days (1 May 1919 and 1920). As already mentioned, the post-conflict situation entailed depleted Gendarmerie numbers, as was the case during the war, and commanders preventively ordered constabulary gendarmes to join their territorial colleagues in support. However, Gendarmerie registers do not report any significant wave of strikes around those Labour Days, even though demonstrations did take place in liberated districts. Had such fears of social unrest been exaggerated? A brigade of the Rocroi division actually sent copies of a detailed report on 26 stonemasons having suspended work (out of barely 140 workers employed at the same company) to the Ministry of War, the deputy prefect, the local Procureur de la République (public prosecutor), the Gendarmerie legion commander, the general in command of the local army subdivision and several other authorities as well!40 This was in fact standard procedure as mandated to all Gendarmerie brigades—even when there was nothing to report except that “calm prevails and nothing seems to suggest any future extension of the strike”. This example illustrates how thin the line sometimes appeared between administrative police work and “political” police work. Although management of public demonstrations was familiar to gendarmes, they were far less acquainted with another specific phenomenon of the post-conflict period: unlawful exhumations. From the very first months of the war, relatives of dead soldiers had requested the authorisation to retrieve the remains of identified servicemen.41 As early as 19 November 1914, the state had denied such requests by

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strictly forbidding disinterment and removal, and assigned mayors, gardes-champêtres (rural rangers) and gendarmes the task of enforcing the ban.42 Deeply aggrieved, a number of families still attempted to perform exhumations either by themselves or by employing specialised firms. Such clandestine operations led to the dispersion of remains, defacement of graves and sanitary risks endangering local populations. In her work on the subject, Béatrix Pau quotes the example of a soldier having probably died of Spanish influenza whose remains were secretly disinterred less than a year after his demise and without adequate prophylactic precautions.43 Although the rise of this phenomenon during the post-conflict period has already been studied in depth by Béatrix Pau, the part played by gendarmes has not yet been fully explored.44 Examination of the archives of the Marne département does reveal that the Ministry of the Interior was in fact first alerted to this growing problem, in the early months of 1919, by local reports from Gendarmerie forces, police units and prefects. Detailed Gendarmerie reports between 1918 and 1921 do confirm that similar unlawful acts were investigated in the Marne, Meuse,45 Oise, Aube and Meurthe-et-Moselle départements.46 Did Gendarmerie brigades have the necessary resources to fight this wave of unusual delinquency? Their first means of preventive action against so-called “exhumators” was permanent surveillance of local burial sites via regular rounds of inspection. Gardes-champêtres,47 police units in urban districts like Troyes,48 registrars and mayors49 also contributed to active surveillance. More broadly, all likely witnesses of clandestine exhumations, from café owners to gravediggers or the local priest, were regularly contacted.50 In every village, even inhabitants owning any vehicle fit for the transportation of one or several coffins were duly identified and listed, not to mention people with carpentry skills. However, the Gendarmerie was confronted with difficulties linked to the general state of disorganisation and the limited willingness of local populations to cooperate. Chaos resulting from the abundance of makeshift burial sites often rendered doubtful the identification of exhumed remains; in several cases, ascertaining the very presence of remains prior to exhumation was even impossible. Gendarmerie reports note the isolated nature of rural cemeteries where such offences were committed. Moreover, a number of investigations were doomed to fail through the initial absence of witnesses.51 Several local officials were even suspected of more or less cooperating with offenders.52 In a report dated

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September 1920, a local mayor questioned by gendarmes stated that he did warn “exhumators” that their intended action was unlawful. It goes on to state that he refused to give their names because the mayor was “himself a veteran”.53 Under such circumstances, preventing clandestine exhumations became a Sisyphean task for gendarmes. Although ambush operations were organised towards the end of 1919 and throughout 1920,54 unlawful exhumations went on for a long time, with the last recorded offence occurring on 15 September 1921.55 Successive circulars were issued to urge all state agents to react, which conversely revealed the difficulty of putting a final stop to such deviant acts.56 This period of struggle against clandestine exhumations therefore underlines the contradictions within post-conflict French society, torn between an official will to impose perfect equality among soldiers, whether living or dead, and the temptation to accelerate the grieving process and allow for oblivion. Such contradictions also existed within the Gendarmerie itself; gendarmes visiting the local cemetery at Écurysur-Coole on 29 September 1919 noticed a recent unlawful exhumation but were shocked to find that the exhumed man was none other than a fellow gendarme!57

Conclusions Ultimately, assignments of the French Gendarmerie in the post-conflict process remained too discreet, or sometimes too unpopular, to earn them public recognition from either civilian or military authorities. Furthermore, several problematic topics are still without definite answers owing to the confusing nature of sources, in particular the issue of how mobilised gendarmes were later returned to their respective legions. This process was documented via a massive amount of administrative correspondence, which makes it quite difficult to achieve a detailed account of events. Very much appreciated by the ranks, this reintegration of constabulary gendarmes (prévôts) into their pre-war units should perhaps lead to a wider inquiry concerning the personal feelings of individuals involved in the post-conflict process. Another interesting idea would be to proceed with a comparative study of the activities of French and Belgian Gendarmerie; this would certainly provide enlightenment on the restoration of state authority in ravaged districts and the containment of social unrest.58 A more global geographical approach may also help to understand the role played by the Arme (corps) in all theatres; areas such

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as Macedonia,59 where the Armée d’Orient (Allied Army of the Orient) remained stationed long after the armistices of 29 September and 11 November 1918, Syria and Lebanon60 (new French Mandate) and the districts of Alsace-Lorraine61 have already been studied in depth, other territories like the Rhineland and Cilicia have only recently started to be explored.62

Notes











1. General Order No. 420 issued by Major General Laguiche, HQ, dated November 20, 1918 (Service Historique de la Défense [hereinafter SHD], ref. 17 N 415). 2. Georges Clemenceau, Discours de guerre, Paris: Plon, 1923, p. 163, quoted by Louis N. Panel in La Grande Guerre des gendarmes. ‘Forcer, au besoin, leur obéissance?’, Paris: Nouveau Monde-DMPA, 2013, p. 515. 3. Nicolas Beaupré, Le Traumatisme de la Grande guerre, 1918–1933, Villeneuve-d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2012. Together with Bruno Cabanes’ pioneering articles published in the 2000s, see also his La victoire endeuillée. La sortie de guerre des soldats français (1918– 1920), Paris: Seuil, 2014. 4. This field of study, for the Great War as well as other periods, is the current focus of a specific “Acteurs, pratiques et représentations de la sécurité – XIXe–XXIe siècles”, seminary at Sorbonne University. 5. Nicolas Beaupré, Le Traumatisme de la Grande guerre, pp. 217–218. 6. Bruno Cabanes, “Comment les soldats français sont sortis de la Première guerre mondiale”, Cahiers du Centre d’Études d’Histoire de la Défense, No. 24, 2005, p. 124. 7.  Ever since the eighteenth century, the word Arme (“arm” meaning “weapon”) is the noble synonym for French army subdivisions: infantry, artillery, etc. By extension and for practical reasons, I will sometimes use it to refer to the National Gendarmerie as a corps. 8.  Louis N. Panel, “‘L’énorme machine’: la gendarmerie et la mobilisation en 1914”, in Jean-Noël Luc (ed.), Soldats de la loi. La gendarmerie au XXe siècle, Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2010, pp. 65–76. 9. Olivier Buchbinder, Gendarmerie prévôtale et maintien de l’ordre (1914– 1918), Maisons-Alfort: SHGN-Phénix éd., 2004, p. 26. 10. André Rakoto, “Les prévôtés françaises près des unités américaines (1917– 1919)”, Revue historique des armées, No. 213, 1998, p. 50. 11.  Marshal commander-in-chief to De Castelnau Army Group, HQ, 6 December 1918 (SHD ref. 18 N 386).

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303

12. Rouvroy brigade, R2 register (routine correspondence), 20 October 1920 (SHD ref. 62 E 438). 13. Trieux brigade, R2 register, 23 December 1919 (SHD ref. 54 E 314). 14. Rocroi division, R2 register, 28 January 1919 (SHD ref. 8 E 24). 15. Saint-Omer brigade, R2 register, 2 July 1919 (SHD ref. 62 E 451). 16. Commissaire général à la sûreté nationale (Head of the General Directorate of National Security) to General Commander-in-Chief of the North and North-East Armies, Paris, 10 December 1918 (SHD ref. 16 N 446). 17. Annex 2 of Special Instruction A No. 26.581-1/11 dated 7 December 1918, Paris, 17 December 1918 (SHD ref. 16 N 446). 18. Raon-lʼÉtape brigade, R2 register, 21 January 1919 (SHD ref. 88 E 542). 19. Raon-lʼÉtape brigade, R2 register, p. 138 (SHD ref. 88 E 544). 20. Rocroi brigade, R2 register, 16 November 1918 (SHD ref. 8 E 24). 21. Ibid., 12 December 1918. 22. Ibid., 16 November 1918. 23. Ibid., 12 December 1918. 24. Ibid., March 1919. 25.  Notable exceptions were the Crécy barracks or those available to the Clermont brigades—apparently not in need of major repairs. Cf. Clermont division, R2 register, 31 August 1919 (SHD ref. 60 E 18); Crécy-en-Ponthieu brigade, R2 register, 29 October 1919 (SHD ref. 80 E 212). 26. Raon-lʼÉtape brigade, R2 register, 30 December 1918 (SHD ref. 88 E 542). 27. Rocroi division, R2 register, 2 November 1918 (SHD ref. 8 E 24). 28. Saint-Just-en-Chaussée brigade, R2 register, 23 March 1919 (SHD ref. 60 E 713). 29.  Such requests were strongly supported by local prefects and deputy prefects. In the Meuse département, the prefect wrote directly to the Ministry of the Interior to signal that “Gendarmerie brigades have returned but only with highly reduced staff levels” (Bar-le-Duc, 28 November 1918, SHD ref. 17 N 195). 30.  Note to all Armies from Aide-Major Régnier, GHQ (Grand Quartier Général), 13 February 1919 (SHD ref. 17 N 195). 31. Trieux brigade, R2 register, 13 January 1919 (SHD ref. 54 E 314). 32. Montdidier division, R2 register, pp. 267–268 (SHD ref. 80 E 57). 33. Montdidier division, R2 register, pp. 267–268 (SHD ref. 80 E 57). 34. Yet even in the days of the Belle Époque Gendarmerie pay was never bountiful—even taking bonuses into account. With little chance of accomplishing the minimum 25 years of service under satisfactory financial conditions, many gendarmes were already inclined to leave for other jobs.

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Arnaud-Dominique Houte underlines that nearly 20% of gendarmes, enrolled after 1880, preferred to leave the force once their 25 years were done and their pension was secured, often opting for reserved positions within other state bodies. Cf. Arnaud-Dominique Houte, Le métier de gendarme au XIXe siècle, Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2010, pp. 168–169. 35. Roland Dorgelès, Le Réveil des morts, 1923, quoted by Nicolas Beaupré, Les Grandes Guerres (1914–1945), Paris: Belin, 2012, pp. 232–233. 36. Rémi Adam, Histoire des soldats russes en France, 1915–1920: Les damnés de la guerre, Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000. 37. Li Ma (ed.), Les travailleurs chinois en France dans la Première Guerre mondiale, Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 2012. 38. Unfortunately, Philippe Nivet provides little supplementary information as to the nature and results of this “special police”. Cf. Prefect report to the local assembly (conseil général) of the Somme département, 1919, Archives départementales de la Somme [hereinafter AD Somme], ref. 4 M 112, quoted by Philippe Nivet, “Les travailleurs ‘chinois’ dans le contexte de la reconstruction”, in Li Ma (ed.), Les travailleurs chinois, pp. 220–221. 39. Cf. Intelligence report dated 2 June 1921, Renseignement sur des attentats communistes commis en France sur les chemins de fer et de l’action illégale, Archives Nationales [hereinafter AN], ref. 7/N/13349. 40. Rocroi division, R2 register, p. 43 (SHD ref. 8 E 25). 41. Letter from prefect Chapron to all mayors of the Marne département, Châlons-en-Champagne, 28 September 1914, Archives départementales de la Marne [hereinafter AD Marne], ref. 2 R 212. 42. Military decree issued by the General (Director) in command of staging posts and services (logistics), Senlis, April 13, 1915, AD Marne, ref. 2 R 210. 43. Béatrix Pau, Le Ballet des morts – État, armée, familles: s’occuper des corps de la Grande Guerre, Paris: La Librairie Vuibert, 2016, p. 105. 44. For a general consideration of how the state took care of servicemen’s remains during the Great War and its immediate aftermath, see both Béatrix Pau’s already mentioned work Le Ballet des morts and her article “La violation des sépultures militaires, 1919–1920”, Revue historique des armées, No. 259, 2010, pp. 33–43. 45. Letter from the prefect of the Meuse département to the Minister of the Interior, Bar-le-Duc, 16 May 1919, Archives Nationales [hereinafter AN], ref. F/2/2124. 46. Report on clandestine exhumations by Colonel Bonnet, commander of the 6th Gendarmerie Sector, AN, ref. F/2/2536. 47. Fisme brigade, report dated 13 October 1919, AD Marne, ref. 2 R 214.

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48.  Reports from the 2nd district police station dated 26 June 1919, 13 August 1919 and 22 April 1920, Troyes, Archives départementales de l’Aube [hereinafter AD Aube], ref. 17 R 126. 49.  Gueux brigade, report dated 23 September 1919, AD Marne, ref. 2 R 214. 50. Ibid., 25 August 1919. 51.  Châlons-en-Champagne brigade, report dated 29 October 1919, AD Marne, ref. 2 R 214. 52. Letter from the under-secretary of state for Public Administrations (Burial Sites division/Office des Sépultures) to the Minister of the Interior, dated 14 November 1919, AN, ref. F/2/2536; Dormans brigade, report dated 9 January 1920, AD Marne, ref. 2 R 211. 53. Châlons-en-Champagne brigade, report dated 9 September 1920, AD Marne, ref. 2 R 210. 54. Soissons division, routine correspondence register (SHD, ref. 2 E 56). 55.  Châlons-en-Champagne brigade, report dated 15 September 1921, AD Marne, ref. 2 R 215. 56. Letter from the Councillor of State and prefect Victor Rault to all mayors of the Marne département, Châlons-en-Champagne, 3 November 1919, AD Marne, ref. 2 R 214; circular from the Minister of the Interior to all prefects concerning clandestine exhumations, Paris, 19 November 1919, AD Marne, ref. 2 R 211. 57. Vitry-la-Ville brigade, report dated 29 September 1919, AD Marne, ref. 2 R 214. 58.  Jonas Campion, “Vers un ‘État dans l’État’? La gendarmerie belge, d’une sortie de guerre à l’autre (1918–1957)”, in Arnaud-Dominique Houte and Jean-Noël Luc (eds.), Les gendarmeries dans le monde, de la Révolution française à nos jours, Paris: Presses de l’Université ParisSorbonne, 2016, pp. 173–185. 59. Isabelle Roy, La gendarmerie française en Macédoine (1915–1920), Maisons-Alfort: SHGN-Phénix éd., 2004. 60. Hélène Faisant de Champchesnel. La Gendarmerie en Syrie et au Liban pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale, PhD (Paris Sorbonne University), 2008. 61. Georges Philippot, Gendarmerie et identité nationale en Alsace et Lorraine (1914–1939), PhD (Metz University), 2008. 62. Romain Pécout, Finir la guerre, gagner la paix? Les gendarmes dans l’interminable sortie de la Première Guerre mondiale (1918–1925), MA thesis (Sorbonne University), 2016.

CHAPTER 21

“The Penetration of French Ideas”: The Role of the Gendarmerie of Alsace and Lorraine in the Local Rebuilding of French National Identity (1918–1925) Georges Philippot

“Propaganda is to political penetration what advertising is to retail”. This dictum was used by Albert Michel, a recently retired Gendarmerie colonel, to introduce his article entitled Où il est parlé de propagande (“A word about propaganda”),1 published on 15 December 1925 in the daily Dernières Nouvelles de Strasbourg. Such conviction had ­underpinned the vast operation led by this former commander of the Alsace and Lorraine Gendarmerie legion from May 1919 to July 1925 and intended to achieve what he considered to be essential: enabling the local ­penetration of French ideas and using his men to do so. Albert Michel was an exceptional Gendarmerie officer. Born in 1867 in Strasburg, he had attended local primary and secondary schools before joining the French Army. Incorporated into the Gendarmerie in 1897,

G. Philippot (*)  Metz University, Metz, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_21

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he was first posted in the Republican Guard (Garde républicaine), then promoted to various command positions in eastern France (notably in Belfort, Saint Dié and Lure). As a chef d’escadron (Gendarmerie major), he was affected to the general staff of the Vosges Army (destined to become the 7th Army in 1915). Obviously fluent in German, his duties as an intelligence officer working for the Deuxième Bureau (the staff division in charge of intelligence) led him to be posted in Remiremont, then back in Lure. Later put in charge of propaganda, he ended the war as the 7th Army’s head of intelligence. In 1917, General Bouchez, general inspector of frontline Gendarmerie units, gave him the assignment to set up the first structures intended to create the future Gendarmerie of Alsace and Lorraine. On 31 December 1918, his appointment as lieutenant colonel in command of the new Gendarmerie legion—created on the same date—was therefore only natural. Beyond this necessary preamble, we will explore the aforementioned “penetration of French ideas” and Albert Michel’s long-term endeavour. Far from improvised, it was supported by an in-depth reflection, the progressive development of a strategy and the use of specific methods.

Albert Michel’s Strategy On careful analysis, Albert Michel’s notion of using the specific resources of the Gendarmerie as a means to make Alsace and Lorraine “French again” may seem entirely rational. However, at the beginning of 1919, Michel was probably the only commander to be convinced of this idea. For local authorities—civilian as well as military—the main option was to discriminate in favour of loyalists and expel undesirables; as to central administrations in Paris, their methods regarding public servants were simple: importing “true Frenchmen” into the territory and sending natives of Alsace and Lorraine to so-called “Inner France” (L’intérieur) for long training periods. Michel believed the only real solution to the problem was persuasion and adhesion—by means of propaganda. This approach was obviously nurtured by his previous experience as head of the 7th Army’s intelligence, and indeed propaganda, services throughout 1918. Yet the creation of enough manoeuvring space to develop his project was an absolute prerequisite to reach his goal and this is precisely what he first set out to achieve—with remarkable skill.

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Finding Support by Acknowledging Dependence from Local Authorities During the first months after the return of Alsace and Lorraine to French rule, Albert Michel’s ambitious ideas on rebuilding the two provinces were kept in abeyance. Having to deal with local military authorities, Lieutenant Colonel Michel quietly set up his Gendarmerie legion and faithfully executed orders to “sort out and expel”, though duly signalling the psychological errors in some dispositions (issuing so-called “B cards”, for instance).2 Alexandre Millerand’s appointment as Commissaire général in Strasburg (General Commissioner for both Alsace and Lorraine and replacing previous “high commissioners” for each département) helped him to resurrect his project. A decree dated 21 March 1919 granting this high representative of the French state a “permanent delegation of powers from the Président du Conseil [the official title of France’s Prime Minister at the time]” entrusted Millerand with “the general administration of the territories of Alsace and Lorraine” and placed under his authority “all services pertaining to this administration”. This was an extraordinary opportunity for Albert Michel—one he immediately seized. With his legion now consolidated, he sent a report, as early as 16 May 1919,3 to the General Commissioner on the subject of “the possible contribution of Gendarmerie personnel to an overall action of penetration and propaganda in Alsace and Lorraine”. Millerand’s subsequent attitude towards Michel’s suggestions and his regular interventions in support of his requests (including for increased staff numbers) demonstrate how much the General Commissioner subscribed to his ideas. Michel was equally successful in convincing Millerand’s successor, Gabriel Alapetite, to whom a new report on “the action of Alsace and Lorraine Gendarmerie in the field of psychological penetration among the local population”, largely inspired by the previous report, was sent on 6 September 1920.4 Creating an Effective Tool and Keeping Its Control This was the most difficult part in the plan. Now supported by higher authority, Albert Michel proceeded to acquire the concrete means of implementing his policy: a school for recruitment and training, as he intended increased numbers for his Gendarmerie legion. Yet the SubDirectorate (later Directorate) of the Gendarmerie, frustrated by its normal prerogatives and totally unreceptive to his ideas, began to

310  G. PHILIPPOT

attempt, by all means available, to regain control of what it saw as a “dissident unit”. It first tried to supress Michel’s indispensable tool (the Gendarmerie Preparatory School in Strasburg), then to reduce his legion’s staff numbers, then finally to supress the legion itself. It took Millerand’s initial clout, then Alapetite’s skilful management to contain the various attacks. I will mention two examples. In January 1923, a project for territorial military reorganisation called the existence of the legion into question, since the resulting adaptation of Gendarmerie command structures would have logically entailed its division into sub-units. As soon as he heard of this project, Michel provided General Commissioner Alapetite with a summary of forceful counter-arguments which the latter took up in his letter5 to the Minister of Justice6 dated 28 January 1923—with the following conclusion: Surely you will consider – as I do personally – that any fragmentation of the Alsace and Lorraine Legion would compromise the achievements of the commander who created it and has managed to turn it into the fully functional tool it currently is; this would affect not only the recruitment and special training of gendarmes for the three recovered départements and [occupied] Rhineland but also the penetration of French influence in our eastern provinces.

The answer from the minister7 was reassuring: “My decision is to grant a provisional continuation of the Alsace-Lorraine Legion under its current organisation and with unchanged attributions”. In 1925, the “special status” of Alsace and Lorraine was altogether removed, this meant the suppression of the General Commissioner and all his dependent administrations. This was a new threat to the existence Albert Michel’s Gendarmerie legion, fully spelled out in a letter with Gendarmerie Directorate letterhead dated 8 August 1925, which the Président du Conseil (also Minister of War) sent to the UnderSecretary of State in charge of the Central Service of Alsace and Lorraine8: Since the situation created by the new legal status no longer warrants the continuation of the special Gendarmerie legion instituted by the 31 December 1918 decree, I thought it might be appropriate – both for cutting costs and for better adaptation of Gendarmerie districts to ­military regions - to suppress this legion whose headquarters are located in Strasburg.

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This letter on a Gendarmerie Directorate letterhead was forwarded to the General Commissioner in Strasburg9 by the Under-Secretary, who nonetheless took the liberty to suggest what the answer should be: the organisation of the Gendarmerie in Alsace and Lorraine has always given us full satisfaction […] we must avoid disturbing the proper running of this service with this measure recommended by the Gendarmerie Directorate.

By then Michel was a colonel, and had been in retirement since 15 July 1925.10 However, he did provide the necessary elements to rebuff the measure. Indeed, a “Note on maintaining the status quo in favour of the Alsace and Lorraine Gendarmerie Legion”11 was typewritten—without letterhead or signature—using a different model of typewriter than the standard one issued to public servants. Its arguments, words and phrases are undoubtedly Michel’s. Such arguments were also taken up in the General Commissioner’s reply12 to the Président du Conseil, requesting the continuation of the Alsace and Lorraine legion. Here is the conclusion of this letter: For the abovementioned reasons, you will surely consider – as I do personally – that any fragmentation of the Alsace and Lorraine Gendarmerie Legion would risk compromising positive results hitherto achieved; this would affect not only the recruitment and special training of gendarmes for the three recovered départements and [occupied] Rhineland but also the penetration of French influence in our eastern provinces.

One cannot fail to notice the fact that these are the exact same words as those used in his previous letter dated 28 January 1923. Yet the issue was already settled. As early as 1 October 1925,13 Under-Secretary of State Georges Bonnet personally informed a member of the French Parliament “that the fears that might have been expressed to you concerning the possible removal of this legion are unfounded and that the competent administration [the Gendarmerie Directorate] has absolutely no intention of jeopardizing this organisation”. Though technically rid of the individual it had always considered as a major obstacle to the implementation of its views, the Gendarmerie Directorate was thus thwarted once again by Colonel Michel, even though retired. This final episode, taking place on the time limit set

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for our present study, is nevertheless highly revealing of the number of difficulties Albert Michel had to overcome in order to keep control of the indispensable tool he had created in the service of his policy. Reducing Repressive Action to a Minimum Orders given in this direction by the legion’s commander are adequately exemplified by the case involving Senator Hirschauer, who, on 21 March 1922,14 had written to the Minister of Justice to complain about Gendarmerie activities in the Sarreguemines district: “Gendarmes obviously deal out far too many fines”. Colonel Michel’s answer was the following: given our interest in acting tactfully in this district, I have recommended infinite moderation and prescribed – above all – preventive action; various notes and guidelines have been issued to this effect, copies of which remain at your disposal.

The truthfulness of this assertion is fully confirmed by the contrary protests from the General Gendarmerie Commissioner for Alsace and Lorraine who denied requests for increased staff numbers on account of the “insufficient average yield” of local gendarmes—the lowest in all France: “While every gendarme books [an average of] 118 fines in Lille and 109 in Nancy, the Strasburg officer barely books 19 and his colleague in Mulhouse only 59”. Such preference for moderation in the commander’s instructions was echoed by his subordinates, as witnessed in reports from company commanders, for example, one dated 21 March 1921 from the Haut-Rhin company, detailed how commissioned officers often explain to their men that the Gendarmerie “may and must indeed contribute significantly to the propaganda effort in the service of the French cause” and that “though repression is part of Gendarmerie assignments, there are circumstances in which such repression must be limited”.15 Using All Means Available—Including PT Instructors Albert Michel was obviously not the only one using propaganda16 to help French ideas “penetrate” post-war Alsace and Lorraine. A propaganda department existed among the services of the General

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Commissioner, with resources Michel himself would sometimes take advantage of, namely all sorts of books, public lectures, films, etc. The originality of his own approach lies in the use of a hierarchical structure providing efficiency via precise and immediate fulfilment of orders over the whole territory being targeted. This structure relied on gendarmes acting as living symbols of the French state and upholding the values of the French Republic; carefully selected, trained and adhering to French ideas, they were also natives of Alsace and Lorraine and therefore much more acceptable to local populations—a force with proper credentials to rebuild French identity. In order to optimise efficiency, one must go beyond the standard uses of propaganda. In his aforementioned training school, Albert Michel developed what he termed “post-training work”; this included using relay organisations, such as the Physical Training Service reporting to the Military Affairs division of the General Commissariat. Across the three départements, numerous and influential sports and gymnastics societies, dating back to German rule, had resumed their activities under the surveillance, since 1919, of military PT instructors. Albert Michel saw in them an opportunity to extend his action and, having secured the approval of military authorities in Alsace, started to contact these PT instructors. This is how he reported on the subject to the General Commissioner (2 December 1921)17: My informal talks with these men - organised in agreement with the competent authorities and with the lieutenant colonel in command of the regional service – were intended to explain to PT instructors the real nature of Alsace and Alsatians; how to proceed with practical penetration and the presentation of series of arguments. Like gendarmes, PT instructors are in daily contact with the populations and it was essential that their specialised training should not remain minimal.

The same report underlines the potential benefit of setting up, within each Gendarmerie brigade, “small regional libraries made up of useful and appropriate books serving our objective”; these libraries could be used to help “those young men [PT instructors] who often live secluded lives, isolated in the villages”. This suggestion was approved by the General Commissioner18 and put into effect.

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Albert Michel’s Method The manner in which Albert Michel used the means he had created for himself resulted from an on-going reflection finding its origin and first applications in the previous assignments he had carried out during the war. The first time he expressed his overall conception of propaganda was very early in May 1917, in a handwritten letter sent to an unidentified colonel. He was then head of intelligence at the 7th Army’s Deuxième Bureau and had just been appointed, while remaining posted, head of the future Training Centre for Alsace and Lorraine gendarmes in Lure: I’m personally very much convinced that methodical penetration is required to establish our influence there. Without a local press, without real Alsatian officers given some autonomy, I’m afraid our past successes will be compromised on several scores and we’ll have a few unpleasant surprises as we take things further. […] This will all be sorted out somehow in the end but we need to have very proper intelligence. […] My dream is to make Alsatian gendarmes a model and example for all officers. […] As agents of penetration, these men are an obvious choice and we could expect a lot from them.

Training real Alsatian officers and giving them a measure of autonomy to turn them into agents of penetration was the starting point of Albert Michel’s approach. This initial concept was later frequently referred to and the documents provided from 1919 to 1923 to the two successive General Commissioners as well as to his subordinates often recycle, sometimes word for word, the arguments already put forward in his early notes, each time supplemented by a further adaptation or refinement of thinking in accordance with a particular situation. Developed from this method of using gendarmes for propaganda purposes both general orientations and concrete procedures can be identified. Illustrating this method, I must also briefly mention the propaganda operation (or “communications offensive” as we would term it today) launched by Michel in September 1919 to counter protests against military conscription (cohorts of 1918 and 1919), however, due to the size constraints placed on this chapter we will not consider this point any further. General Orientations Although the Gendarmerie is by nature a promoter of national identity, owing to its recruitment, organisation and territorial reach, not to

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mention the prohibitive function inherent in some of its assignments, is it possible for this institution to go any further? It certainly can in terms of structural capacity, but would it be lawful? Albert Michel’s answer was yes; in certain circumstances, it was the duty of gendarmes not only to enforce French laws but also to promote French ideas. The problem, however, is that French laws are easily identifiable whereas defining what French ideas are remains more elusive—unless perhaps when associated with a common culture, language or heritage. Therein lies an existential quandary for the institution: as long as the legislation to be enforced by gendarmes is only the democratic formalisation of the French people’s “ideas”, there are no qualms, however, what is to be done when, owing to exceptional circumstances, there is no democratic validation or legal formalisation of “ideas”? Individual gendarmes operating in Alsace and Lorraine during the “transition period” between 1918 and 1925 did not actually ponder such questions but Albert Michel fully understood this dilemma and was keen, on several occasions, to justify the extensions he intended for the Gendarmerie’s overall mission. Here, for instance, follows a passage from a note19 he sent to all local Gendarmerie companies on 15 July 1921: Since the creation of the Legion, it is acknowledged and settled that we must act as clever and efficient agents of French penetration. […] Contributing to the enlightenment of public opinion and improving – insofar as we can – the state of mind of populations […] is but another way of maintaining law and order and – to large extent – ensuring public peace. By furthering penetration, we therefore merely perform our duties and comply with our obligations as citizens.

These statements are probably intended to dispel among his subordinates20 the notion of what might have seemed to some of them an “ethical obstacle”. Yet all of them were already fully engaged in the path he had expounded at large in his summary report to the General Commissioner dated 16 May 1919. This report began with the advantages to be drawn from using the Gendarmerie for propaganda purposes: If the involvement of Gendarmerie staff in general operations of penetration and propaganda must be necessarily limited, its impor­ tance is nonetheless considerable. A gendarme is allowed universal access

316  G. PHILIPPOT – everywhere and at all times; he is therefore in permanent direct contact with all populations. For the people of Alsace and Lorraine, he is an immediate representative of our nation: in their eyes, his uniform is the very incarnation of France … One cannot fail to appreciate how much authority may therefore derive – in various respects – from the presence of officers properly drilled and adequately prepared for their mission. As educators of the general public in the observance of laws and regulations, these men could be direct agents of French penetration.

In the same note, the legion commander also draws attention to the necessity of organising counter-propaganda “against the nefarious influence of the Germans, which still persists as we speak”. In this context, the general aim must be “to bring the people of Alsace and Lorraine to live in the ambient atmosphere alone and to vaccinate them against the contamination of ideas from the outside”. Once this general aim was determined and justifications provided, concrete means and procedures remained to be defined. Concrete Ways and Means Albert Michel had acquired great experience of propaganda during the war. Of interest in this perspective is the way in which he advertised the Appel au Poilu! (“Call to the Poilu!”)21 brochure he created and had published at the beginning of 1918. This propaganda brochure was in line with the previous action he had launched in late 1917 to help Alsatians who had been evacuated to French départements in the south and south-west areas of the Vosges. Having noticed how the poilus often lumped them together with the Boches and the rough treatment sometimes suffered as a result by his fellow countrymen, Michel secured from his superiors the necessary authorisation to create this 17-page brochure aiming to improve the image of Alsatians among French soldiers. A hefty rant against the “Krauts”, this vigorous Call to the Poilu! also bids them to show more respect to Alsatians. Even more interesting is the “marketing operation”22 used to promote this brochure. The companion note23 that Michel had printed and distributed along with it is remarkably modern. Under the heading Appel au Poilu! and the subtitle “Propaganda methods to be used”, recommended ways and means are provided in detail:

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By speech: To be read aloud and commented by commanding officers (units, depots, training centres, schools, etc.). Wherever possible, suitable specialists will introduce the subject, taking advantage – for instance – of cinema evenings or any other such gathering. In writing: Copies to be deposited at any gathering or transit place where poilus will be found: hospitals, ambulances, resting homes for the wounded, soldiers’ mess, coffee booths, meeting halls, depots, training centres, canteens, major railway stations, etc.

Such were the concrete methods the legion commander had already in mind when he launched the implementation of his propaganda policy. In his summary report dated 16 May 1919, Albert Michel gives a very rational presentation of the modus operandi he recommended. This follows a dual approach: “propaganda action targeting staff” followed by “propaganda action using staff”. The first phase is essentially devoted to training native gendarmes from Alsace and Lorraine; the second focuses on the three positions a gendarme may occupy in his brigade: within quarters or offices, outside on duty and off duty in his private occupations. Reminding his readers that “the offices of a Gendarmerie brigade are largely frequented by members of the general public”, Michel recommended the following: Handsome posters on the walls – pinned to be seen – must both impress and pass on a message to visitors. Gendarmerie offices should also be provided with small stocks of tracts, brochures, illustrated postcards, etc., that properly trained staff should know how to put in the right hands at the right moment. In this way, no opportunity would be lost.

While outside on duty, gendarmes are bound to encounter all sorts of people from all occupations or backgrounds. Consequently, they should: Bring along – without adding needless weight to their equipment – a number of tracts or brochures they may distribute – should the opportunity arise – among the people they deal with. From conversations and hearsay, one may also easily understand where and how wrong ideas can be corrected, errors fought back and public opinion oriented.

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As to off-duty occupation: Like any dutiful citizen, a gendarme in his private occupations must never miss an opportunity to combat wrong opinions about France and its history and to debunk irrational admiration for Germany. Every gendarme must have memorised everything that was explained to him; thus fully equipped with arguments, he will surely succeed and get the right message across. One may even tactfully steer conversations towards subjects prepared in advance in order to become a useful spokesman for the ideas and principles we intend to propagate or an efficient destroyer of wrong ideas and harmful propaganda.

Albert Michel gradually refined his method. Though taking up the same essential ideas, the new summary report he wrote in September 1920 reformulates the initial justification (“We are not merely cogs in the works of law and order enforcement but also active agents of French penetration”) and adds further precision to his definition of ways and means: properly carried out, a gendarme’s intervention will never seem – at any moment – to be coercive or fraught with ulterior motives […]. It is with tact, discretion, impeccable behaviour and keenness to serve our country by inspiring confidence that all gendarmes are invited to take part in this necessary and salutary effort.

Returning to outside duties, what he now terms “nomadic action”, Michel gives extremely detailed instructions. Quoted in full, these provide the most explicit and refined version of the “Michel method”: This action is essentially based on travel; gendarmes doing their rounds must bring along samples of propaganda publications, which they must also know how to place in the rights hands. This must be done with skill; it is easy to drive the conversation to a given subject in order to bring out – at the right time – a small volume from one’s pocket or satchel and offer it. A well-placed volume will be more effective than 20 others distributed at random or clumsily handed out (in which case targeted people will become suspicious and prejudiced against what is to be read). Limiting wasted opportunities to a minimum is all a matter of skill and tactfulness. Postcards, printed images gifted to children, simple texts easy to understand by the masses, more complex publications for people with the ability to assimilate them (schoolteachers, public servants, etc.) – all these items

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are part of a methodical and gradual system from which a great deal can be expected. Finally, special action must be targeted at the ‘neo-French’, i.e. de jure naturalised Germans or even those still German. I have had personal experience of the positive effect on some Boches of our ‘Kriegstaten’ or ‘J’accuse’ brochures – to mention but these. In large towns, our penetration action may be skilfully practiced in places where managers are known to us: cafés, medical clinics, hairdressers and many others. There is a whole lot of fields where we could act without any limitation.

Such was the method, in its most elaborate version. Yet what about selecting those printed items being referred to? For each type of material, such as tracts, books, postcards and posters, the “communications expert” analysed the corresponding advantages and drawbacks with remarkable intelligence: People are always somewhat suspicious of tracts; even the best made ones still look like commercial advertising. Small books – especially with illustrations or maps – are the most effective; these must be bilingual or in German (except for the [French-speaking] third of Lorraine). Books only printed in French are read only by people already convinced or – I saw this myself – remain stocked on the shelves of town halls. Demonstrative posters ought to be visible on the walls of Gendarmerie offices but also of every town hall, post office, railway station, tax collector’s office, etc. Effective postcards ought to be distributed among schoolchildren. There’s a whole systematic organisation to be developed!

When it comes to classifying works of propaganda, Albert Michel provides a list of those, that he states “in my own experience” exercise “the best influence on hearts and minds”: Kriegstaten (Acts of War) J’accuse (Accusations—using Zola’s famous press appeal as a model) Das Verbrechen (The Crime) Was die Deutschen mit Elsass-Lothringen vorhatten (What Germans were Preparing for Alsace and Lorraine) Coups de crayon (Brief Sketches) Rapports Hindenbourg (Hindenburg Reports)

for natives and Germans for Germans for Germans for both Alsace and Lorraine natives

for both Alsace and Lorraine natives for natives and Germans

320  G. PHILIPPOT Pourquoi l’Allemage a capitulé (Why Germany Surrendered) Les atrocités allemandes pendant la guerre 1914–1918 (German Atrocities during the War) Appel au Poilu! (A Call to the Poilu) Les responsabilités de l’Allemagne (Germany’s Responsibilities) Petite histoire de la France en guerre (A Short History of France at War) Seche Tatsachen als Grundlage zur Beurteilung des heutigen Machtpolitik (Six Basic Facts to Understand Contemporary Power Politics) Die Schuld der deutschen Regierung am Kriege (The Responsibilities of the German Government in the War) Meine Erlebnisse in Deutschland vor dem Weltkriege (My Experience in Germany before the War) La question de l’Alsace-Lorraine par l’Américan Whitney Warren (The Question of Alsace-Lorraine—by the American author Whitney Warren)

for teachers for the general public

for people of old French stock for teachers for Alsace and Lorraine natives with an average education for teachers and people with a higher level of education

for Germans

for natives and Germans

for people of old French stock and the general population

Every brigade should also be equipped with a “special library”: “Gendarmes must read its contents. Two copies of each item should be available and could be placed on loan into proper hands”.

Conclusions Is it ultimately possible to assess the efficiency of the Alsace and Lorraine Gendarmerie legion in carrying out this unusual assignment of promoting the “penetration of French ideas”? Assessment is rendered all the more difficult since the “Michel method”, as described in the reference documents drafted during the war by Michel himself, implied concealment of the incentive or even the manipulative nature of such propaganda. As he wrote in his report dated 18 April 1918 on “action by words”: “If this manoeuvre were to be detected, our effort would have been a waste of time”. Reactions in the press or from local politicians might demonstrate that this manoeuvre had indeed been detected; however, with the exception of expectable protests from individuals being

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fined or arrested during violent strikes wholly unconnected to propaganda, there is no evidence in the press, nor in private correspondence, of any opinion challenging the gendarmes’ involvement in propaganda activities. This probably reflects the correct fulfilment of Colonel Michel’s instructions by the men he had recruited and trained for the very purpose; it may also reflect an appreciation of their action as—given the circumstances of the hour—perfectly normal.

Notes

1. Archives départementales du Bas-Rhin [hereinafter AD Bas-Rhin], 98 AL/639. Press file containing excerpts from nine articles published by Albert Michel. 2. A specific model of identity card reserved for individuals with a least one non-French parent or grandparent. 3. AD Bas-Rhin. 121 AL/421, Report from Lieutenant Colonel Michel, 16 May 1919. 4. AD Bas-Rhin. 121 AL/424, Report from Lieutenant Colonel Michel, 6 September 1920. 5. AD Bas-Rhin. 121 AL/421, Letter from the General Commissioner of the Republic, 28 January 1923. 6. From January 1922, the “General Service of Alsace and Lorraine”—to which the General Commissioner’s services reported—was placed under the authority of the Ministry of Justice. 7.  AD Bas-Rhin. 121 AL/421, Letter from the Minister of Justice, 15 March 1923. 8. AD Bas-Rhin. 121 AL/42, Letter, 8 August 1925. 9. By then Mr. Cacaud, acting General Commissioner for more than a year after the resignation of Gabriel Alapetite. 10.  Service historique de la Défense – département armée de terre [herinafter SHD-DAT], 11YF 10647. 11. AD Bas-Rhin. 121 AL/421. 12. AD Bas-Rhin. 121 AL/421, Letter from the General Commissioner of the Republic, 13 October 1925. 13. AD Bas-Rhin. 121 AL/42, Letter from Georges Bonnet to a Member of the Chamber of Deputies, 1 October 1925. 14.  Archive Nationales [hereinafter] AN AJ/30/421, Handwritten note from Senator Hirschauer, together with the Minister’s reply taking up the elements provided by Colonel Michel via the General Commissioner. 15. AD Bas-Rhin. 121 AL/425, Report dated 22 March 1921 from Major (Chef d’escadron) Dupré, acting commander of his company, concerning a recent claim against Gendarmerie activity.

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16. In her PhD thesis entitled L’Alsace entre France et Allemagne 1919–1932, Chantal Metzger provides a specific chapter comparing German and French propaganda side by side (“Fighting around the two cultures”). 17. AD Bas-Rhin. 121 AL/42, Report from Lieutenant Colonel Michel, 2 December 1921. 18. AD Bas-Rhin. 121 AL/42, Letter from the General Commissioner, 5 December 1921. 19. AD Bas-Rhin. 121 AL/421/, Note from Lieutenant Colonel Michel to Gendarmerie companies, 15 July 1921. 20. Most commissioned officers in the legion at the time were natives of Alsace and Lorraine (several of them having served during the war as provosts in the Eastern Army Group). 21. AD Bas-Rhin. 98 AL/639, “Appel au Poilu!”, Editions d’Alsace-Lorraine (copy dated March 1918). 22. This word is only semantically anachronistic. Nothing resembles more contemporary marketing than Albert Michel’s techniques—which is hardly surprising for a man who claimed that “Propaganda is to political penetration what advertising is to retail”. 23. AN AJ30/241, Note: Appel au Poilu – Procédé de propagande à employer.

CHAPTER 22

Parisian Policemen and the Traces of the Great War Christian Chevandier

The three ministers in charge of the Interior from 1914 to 1918 were Louis Malvy (until September 1917), Jules Steeg (until November 1917) and Jules Pams (for the remainder of the war period). All of them were mainly concerned with the war effort and did not bring any major changes to the administration of police forces. At the head of the Parisian Préfecture de police, successive prefects Emile Laurent, Louis Hudelo and Fernand Raux were all placed under the authority of the military governor of Paris for the whole duration of hostilities and did not leave any distinctive imprint on the history of the institution. There is probably nothing exceptional in this, since major events were only taking place on the front line and one must approach French policemen of the Great War with this basic factor in mind. While the activities of gendarmes feature prominently in testimonies of the same period1—be it at the front or in civilian areas—police officers seem to have played only a minor part in spite of their daily presence on the streets. Yet accepting this approach may lead to a consideration of urban contexts

C. Chevandier (*)  University of Le Havre, Le Havre, France © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_22

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as mere passive scenes deserted by able-bodied men, when in fact cities like Paris were still active with far from negligible social and political energy. Furthermore, as witnessed by the key role played by the Paris gardiens de la paix in August 1944, police officers as a social group, though technically non-military, can sometimes act decisively in an on-going battle; one must therefore enquire beyond false impressions, examine their wartime activities and reveal the paradox of an apparently limited contribution with lasting legacies, traceable for years if not decades after the war.

A Civilian Body with Military Potential During the 1910s, several thousands of uniformed policemen were in charge of Paris and its outskirts—together with other major cities across France—while the Gendarmerie was in charge of all rural districts. “Municipal police” was the general phrase used for this professional group reporting to municipal authorities, the only exceptions being Paris, Lyon and Marseille where forces, comprising a state police as a matter of fact, reported to the local prefects at département level. Paris remained a special case inasmuch as the Préfet de police was the head of an institution inherited from the Ancien Régime and not a standard prefect. Long without precise training and recruitment procedures, Parisian units were nonetheless being streamlined ever since the end of the previous century, in a general effort to standardise police forces as part of what would later be understood as “public services”. Napoléon I only referred to the Gendarmerie when he asserted that “troops in charge of maintaining law and order must not be denied the honor to serve the grandeur of the Nation outside its borders”.2 Yet half a century later, the creation in 1854 of a body of uniformed agents acting for the Préfecture de police raised the issue of non-military troops. Were these so-called sergents de ville—rebranded as gardiens de la paix publique (“keepers of the public peace”) three days after the proclamation of the 3rd Republic on 7 September 1870—also destined to act in combat? This question was soon settled. Before the end of September 1870, some 3000 were sent to fight against the armies of various German states besieging Paris. Forming several infantry companies and an artillery company, they actively contributed to the defence of the city with most of them being “positioned on combat outposts from the early

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days of the siege”.3 Serving in these units, policemen kept their initial municipal ranks with brigadiers acting as sergeants and officiers de paix acting as captains. Many among them had formerly served in the wars of the Second Empire, in Crimea, Italy or Mexico,4 and therefore defending their own city was perfectly natural.

Policing a Transformed City at War Paris during the First World War was far less populated. Having initially lost about a third of its three million inhabitants, it also suffered regular panic flights in accordance with the changing military situation. Long before the exodus phenomena of 1940, several massive flights took place during the war, affecting mostly western districts since dwellers of poorer neighbourhoods in the east could seldom afford to leave their homes when faced with approaching danger. Paris was therefore much quieter than it used to be in the days of the Belle Époque when so-called “Apaches,” hoodlums or anarchists (e.g., the famous bande à Bonnot gang)5 made street violence more frequent,6 using new types of handguns such as the legendary Browning revolver or instigating less modern but equally spectacular knife fights. This tide of crime had not been specific to Paris, as demonstrated by the overall rising homicide rate over some 25 years,7 but it made the recent calm resulting from the mobilisation and departure of thousands of men even more striking by contrast. A number of riots were nonetheless to be deplored, including attacks on Maggi and other shops which rumour had it harboured German spies; this happened in the early months of the war and police forces were then powerless to stop plundering. However, such incidents later became very rare. Reading of daily police reports for each of the 20 districts of Paris8 provides clear evidence that, following a few initial weeks of disorganisation at the outbreak of war, police officers were little overworked and that crime had fundamentally changed. It went on the wane with three times fewer cases brought before the Paris criminal court in 1915 than in 1913; average profiles had also changed, with more women caught stealing and more children and youngsters, deprived of father figures and authority, now getting into trouble. Yet petty crime and more serious offenses began to rise again after 1916 when deserters or former “Apaches,” discharged from the army, flocked back to cities where the

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absence of able-bodied men gave them greater opportunities to commit assaults. Police officers were involved in tracking down deserters via the community policing system, which, although initially disorganised by the war, proved to be efficient in spotting suspects—a few however were clever enough to dress up as women and hide in seedy neighbourhoods like the quartier de Charonne.9 Paris under siege had been bombarded during the 1870–1871 war and several thousands of artillery shells had caused around a hundred casualties. Bombardments were less intense during the Great War, with only about 300 victims in spite of a much longer duration of hostility. Although aeroplanes and Zeppelins had been in action as early as August 1914, long-range artillery guns were mostly responsible for damage; mobile Pariser Kanonen that had been mounted on rails suddenly struck the city, in one instance wiping out customers at La Veilleuse (one of the most famous cafés in Belleville) and parishioners attending the Good Friday service at St. Gervais’ church.10 However real the threat was, Parisians often ignored regulations and police officers were instructed to compel passers-by to go down to the shelters during air raids or alerts. This task proved dangerous in itself and half of all officers killed on duty were victims of shells during the last winter of the war—two near Porte de Vincennes and two others in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. The war years obviously saw a great reduction in the number of street demonstrations but the policing of public events did not cease altogether. Examples include the ceremony marking the transfer of Rouget de Lisle’s remains to the Hôtel des Invalides (14 July 1915), the inauguration of President Wilson Avenue, involving diplomatic representatives (4 July 1918) and the many thousands of patriotic initiatives like the planting of the “Verdun memorial tree” on the Ile de la Cité (24 December 1917).11 Even social protest movements were far from insignificant, especially in 1917 and 1918, although “strikes very seldom turned violent during the war”.12 While most civilians remained calm, servicemen often proved rowdy when in Paris and created major problems for police officers; while military authorities were in charge of the main railway stations linked to the front line (Gare de l’Est and Gare du Nord), many soldiers going home on leave transited through other large stations (e.g., Gare de Lyon with PLM lines heading south) where only Parisian police officers were available to impose orderly behaviour—or at least maintain some degree of it.13

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Shirkers in Uniform Mobilisation did not exempt police officers from duty and some of them were indeed sent to the front. This resulted in a number of police units being depleted and unable to face emergency situations. Consequently, there was recruitment of military volunteers known as “auxiliary agents”. Both volunteers, mostly soldiers stationed in Paris, and professional police officers having been allowed to remain were by definition able-bodied men and the general public began to perceive them as shirkers, suspecting them of cowardice or weak patriotism and ultimately questioning their legitimacy—as witnessed in many repeated incidents. Police officers were so often branded as “draft dodgers with a cushy job” that soldiers on leave would specifically target them. When stopping servicemen for identity checks or searches, police officers would be yelled at with classic taunts such as these examples recorded in June 1916: “How about picking up a gun, man? How about taking a train to Verdun instead of harassing me?” As historian Emmanuelle Cronier underlines after quoting them: Such insults take up traditional accusations levelled at the Parisian police and the same stock-in-trade smears were also used against gendarmes patrolling behind the front line in search of deserters. A similar rhetoric was used against all types of perceived shirkers.14

The police reputation was in fact so damaged that during the mutinies of May 1917, a soldier wrote in a private letter that he had heard about police charges in Paris having resulted in “some fifty [innocent] victims”.15 This anecdotal evidence reveals a momentary but significant break with the pre-war past when soldiers would always lend a hand to help police officers in difficulty or when troops from Paris barracks and police officers worked together to contain demonstrators or arrest Jules Bonnot’s “gangsters on wheels”.16

Provincial Towns However meaningful, the situation in Paris was nevertheless only one particular case. Although most urban centres experienced the same reduction in male population, causing similar problems for police forces, seaports and garrison towns were facing a very different situation.

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Le Havre provides a proper example. Part of its municipal police force had been drafted and those remaining were barely coping with their tasks in spite of reservists having been mobilised to help them and however much military authorities seemed ready to cooperate. As a military port and the seat of several military sanitary institutions, Le Havre welcomed a British naval fleet and, during the last years of the war, an American contingent. Municipal police officers were therefore not the only uniformed force involved in the maintenance of law and order; beyond French military police, there were also British and American military police—not to mention forces of the Belgian government in exile exerting their authority over a temporary “capital” in the outskirts of Le Havre.17 Frequent clashes occurred between sailors or soldiers, who were often drunk, and the local population. As in the rest of the country, municipal police officers in uniform were also commonly taken to task, reviled, called many names (including “shirkers” of course) and summarily invited to “go and face the Krauts on the front line” rather than “stay prancing around in their uniforms”. Such events happened so frequently that the police became resigned to failure.18 Deliberately avoiding incidents with various troops stationed in the town, police officers opted for discretion. However, this only reinforced their reputation for cowardice.

Lasting Traces A More Brutal Society While the war had caused a significant drop in violence directed towards police officers, especially violence connected with the perpetration of offenses, this violence picked up again intensely as soon as hostilities came to an end: 12 Parisian police officers lost their lives during the first 3 years of peacetime, 11 from gunshots or while making arrests (the twelfth died trying to rescue a drowning man during flooding of the River Seine). Then came a lull and the number of tragedies returned to normal long-term patterns. Likewise, social unrest, which had remained muted until the end of the war, returned with a vengeance in 1919 and 1920,19 with strikers and demonstrators openly saying things like “We promise to kill cops”.20 Such violence was not only threatened: only one officer had ever died before the war, that was when stepping in front of a bullet to protect prefect Lépine,21 however, two died of blows sustained during Communist demonstrations in 1927 and 1929. Should

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the workers of 1919–1920 be considered veterans22 that had become accustomed to fighting, in the same manner some historians interpreted workers in Sochaux who fought Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS) riot police units in 1968 as young men have returned from service during the Algerian War?23 Post-war years were tough and probably saw the effect of “brutalisation”,24 that is, a general habituation towards violence and a removal of moral inhibitions among former witnesses of war violence. A force also at play, especially in terms of armed crime, was the sheer availability of guns that had resulted from the dispersion of weapons across the country at the end of hostilities. Material Traces Several changes were brought to the standard equipment used by Parisian police officers. As early as 1917, they were equipped with Adrian helmets—the same army issue helmets French soldiers had been wearing for 2 years and which would remain in use (albeit a modified version with a crest but without neck cover or a visor) until the 1970s. First donned during wartime bombardments, then made mandatory for rescue operations (in line with Paris fire brigade regulations), this helmet did not replace the traditional kepi worn for street policing. When this possible replacement was mooted after the February 1934 riots, police officers rejected it for fear of being confused with the gardes mobiles or gardes républicains—units that were reportedly unpopular. This detail was all the more significant in symbolic terms since Parisians killed during the 6 February riot had all been shot by Parisian police officers.25 During the 4 years of German occupation in WWII, authorities managed to impose the permanent wearing of helmets in order to give a more martial appearance to police forces they were orienting towards a more repressive role, for instance against the patriotic demonstrations in 1944. However, this helmet became fully accepted and legitimate as a result of the fiery insurrection of August 1944, when insurgent police officers who had cast off their uniforms to follow instructions from resistance fighters of French Forces of the Interior commanders decided to wear it as their only distinctive sign—still clearly visible on photographs— during the street fights that occurred between August 19 and August 24. Namely, on 25 and 26 August, police officers and other insurgents joined forces with General Leclerc’s Second Armoured Division toward their goal: the liberation of Paris. The helmet was also worn when. The helmet was also worn when Parisian police officers defiled in dress

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uniform behind their prefect on 12 October 1944 for a military march from the Hôtel des Invalides to the Caserne de la Cité barracks—a final warlike public display and a far cry from what some had first thought of this head gear during the Great War when it arrived in the trenches: “You look like a d**k with that helmet on – f** you, man!”.26 Hitherto not equipped with firearms but only a bayonet saber (model 1866), ill-adapted to missions,27 Parisian police officers were granted 8-mm revolvers (model 1892) or Ruby-type Spanish pistols drawn from army stockpiles destined to still be in circulation at the end of the next world war. Another effect of the Great War was the reluctance of police authorities to use tear gas. Even before the war, Parisian police engineers from the technical division had prepared cans of ethyl bromoacetate28 and organised its use with the so-called “Z car”. However, this was only intended to restrain maniacs, not to disperse or contain crowds; in fact, it was not until the troubles of 1947 that tear gas was used for such purposes, so strong and inhibitive was the memory of the use of mustard gas during the war.29 A Different Group As a social group in uniform, Parisian police were transformed by the massive post-war recruitments rendered necessary by changes in labour legislation (a new law coming into force in the spring of 1919 limited work to 8 hours a day) or required to replace older officers having stayed beyond the age limit on account of the war. New officers in the early 1920s were much different from their pre-1914 predecessors, notably with more varied backgrounds; though still mainly former soldiers, their profiles were not identical and many also had previous work experience in qualified jobs. Their military history itself was quite different, since all of them had experienced real combat and conditions hitherto unknown. Life in barracks was nothing like the trenches where peer solidarity was indispensable to survival and the war had “shaped factors leading to a redefinition of authority”30—commanders now had to earn their legitimacy by proving themselves. This may be why commendation by a “respectable person,” much reviled in the 1890s but still systematically required, ceased to be a mandatory condition for recruitment. Changes in the labour market also played a part: men of working age had been decimated and employers could no longer be too demanding. The age of new recruits bears proof of these new conditions; in a period of full

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employment, working as a gardien de la paix was hardly an attractive proposition, selection criteria had to be lowered and the force enrolled much younger men: one was recruited at the age of 22 in 1921, whereas before the war very few ever had a chance of joining below the age of 25. Successive laws passed in 1894 and 1905 meant that 80% of police employment positions in the département de la Seine (Paris and its outskirts) were reserved for former servicemen, but wartime years of service had changed military profiles. Some observers like Dr. Edmond Locard, a pioneer of forensic investigation in Lyon, had long complained about a lack of diversity: There’s nothing more damageable to police forces than this obligation to employ those regular career NCOs who only bring with them three perfectly useless qualities – insolence, laziness and a habit of drinking more than they should.31

The public image of uniformed policemen thus gradually improved. With the exception of officers in the reserve companies who specialised in the policing of public events, the average policeman on the street was perceived—from the last decade of the nineteenth century—as a somewhat apathetic, clumsy former serviceman having only opted for a change of uniform in the expectation of his retirement pension. From that point onwards, policemen were veterans, that is, former fellow combatants with closer ties to their own age groups. In the context of postwar society where all veterans demanded recognition of their sacrifices, police officers organised themselves like many other groups and formed a corporatist union of police veterans (Union des anciens combattants de la police)32 in the months immediately following the end of the conflict. Its demands focused on preferential promotion rules, quite in line with the Ligue des victimes de la guerre, a nationwide league of war victims who— as late as the mid-1920s—demanded reserved jobs and even special uniforms for the war wounded.

A Group Suffering War Trauma—Just Like the Rest of France The whole population of the country suffered deep scars from the war and its memories conditioned the French perception of the world for at least half a century33; it was not until the 1960s that men who had

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been of school age during the Great War actually left police forces. The Préfecture de Police archives in Paris still hold the files of many men who offered their lives during duty, including those who fell fighting the Germans during the insurrection of August 1944.34 Of the 139 killed during that week, and with records complete enough to allow for comparative assessment, 104 were born between 1892 (the oldest being a deputy police sergeant and WWI veteran killed on the first day) and 1918 (the youngest, a gardien de la paix, shot on the barricades of the Latin Quarter). Among them, 35 were of school age during the Great War and their autobiographies, short summaries drafted at the time of their training, reveal that more than half (20) had been unable to attend school without interruption or had to drop school altogether, sometimes as young as 9, that is, 4 years below the legal minimum age. The departure for war of breadwinners had disrupted their homes and often forced these schoolboys to replace their fathers or elder brothers on the farm or to take up any job that might bring in any amount of cash. Yet these boys were later plucky enough to reach the level of education required to pass an examination and become a police officer—a sure sign of resilience and a factor which might explain their ultimate willingness to join the force and offer their lives. All officers originating from districts under WWI German occupation had had to leave school and work, mainly in agriculture. However, in one case a child of 11, born in a small village some 10 miles from Charleville-Mézières, worked in a metal factory. A comparative study between the fallen of 1944 and the list of officers stationed in the police precincts of Charonne and Bonne-Nouvelle in 1936 (and likely to have still been active 8 years later at the time of the insurrection) reveals a significant detail: a quarter of the fallen were native of départements under WWI German occupation compared to only a seventh of those on the 1936 list.35 Is there a correlation? One may certainly suspect a number of young boys had been traumatised enough to promise themselves, in line with expected gender-normative behaviour, to one day fight the Germans.36 Arsène Poncey, a brigadier (police sergeant) active at the central police station of the 6th district in Paris, also a WWI veteran and WWII combatant (plus chairman of the Veterans’ Union in the early 1940s), was “probably of the most distinguished resistance fighters in the French police”.37 Numbering among the earliest to join the Resistance in the Valmy then Honneur de la police groups, he was arrested by his colleagues of the Préfecture de police’s special brigades and deported to

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Mauthausen where he died. This biography gives us perspective and reminds us that less than 22 years had passed between the Armistice of 11 November 1918 and 22 June 1940. Although the contribution of police forces proved to be far from essential in Paris between 1914 and 1918, as was also the case in Berlin or London,38 the long-term effects of the conflict on the institution as well as on policemen as a social group are not ultimately negligible, inasmuch as they cannot be dissociated from similar effects on the whole French population. The Great War left the same imprints on police officers as it did on the rest of the nation— deep, lasting legacies.

Notes

1. So frequently mentioned that their effective action has sometimes been integrated into wider controversies questioning the role of the state at large, cf. Antoine Prost, “La guerre de 1914 n’est pas perdue”, Le Mouvement social, No. 199, 2002, pp. 95–119. 2. Jean-Noël Luc (ed.), Gendarmerie, État et société au XIXème siècle, Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2002, p. 127. 3. Alfred Rey and Louis Féron, Histoire du corps des gardiens de la paix, Paris: Ville de Paris, 1896, pp. 249–308. 4. Ibid. 5.  Michelle Perrot, “Dans la France de la Belle époque, les ‘Apaches’, premières bandes de jeunes”, Cahiers Jussieu, “Les Marginaux et les exclus dans l’histoire”, No. 5, 1979, pp. 389–407. 6. Frédéric Chauvaud, De Pierre Rivière à Landru, la violence apprivoisée au XIXème siècle, Paris: Brepols, 1991. 7. Jean-Claude Chesnais, Les morts violentes en France depuis 1926, Paris: Institut national des études démographiques/Presses universitaires de France, 1976, pp. 78–79. 8. The archives of the Préfecture de Police have preserved wartime main courante registers (incident reports) for 68 out of the 80 police stations in Paris. 9. Fabrice Virgili and Danièle Voldman, La garçonne et l’assassin. Histoire de Louise et de Paul, déserteur travesti, dans le Paris des années folles, Paris: Payot, 2011. 10. Maurice Garden and Jean-Luc Pinol, Atlas des Parisiens. De la Révolution à nos jours: population, territoire et habitat, productions et services, religion, culture, loisirs, Paris: Parigramme, 2009, pp. 36–37. See also Jules Poirier, Les Bombardements de Paris (1914–1918). Avions, Gothas, Zeppelins, Berthas, Paris: Payot, 1930.

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11. Danielle Tartakowsky, Manifester à Paris 1880–1920, Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2010, pp. 61–66. 12. Jean-Louis Robert, Les ouvriers, la Patrie et la Révolution. Paris 1914– 1919, Besançon: Annales littéraires de l’université de Besançon, 1995, p. 361. 13.  Cf. Proceedings of the “Gares en guerre, Stations in Wartime 1914– 1918” conference, Paris, September 2014 published in a special issue of the Revue d’histoire des chemins de fer, Nos. 50–51, 2018. 14. Emmanuelle Cronier, Permissionnaires dans la Grande Guerre, Paris: Belin, 2013, p. 184–188. 15. André Loez, 14–18. Les refus de la guerre. Une histoire de mutins, Paris: Gallimard, 2010, p. 169. 16. Laurent López, Criminocorpus, “La bande à Bonnot: l’assaut final à Nogent (14–15 mai 1912)”, May 2009, full text available online at http://www.criminocorpus.cnrs.fr/article375.html (19 February 2019). 17. Concerning the presence of British, American and Belgian police forces in Le Havre, see Archives municipales du Havre, H4-5 and H4-6. 18. Colin Marais, Une police républicaine? La police municipale du Havre sous la Troisième République (1870–1941), MA thesis (Le Havre University), 2013, pp. 353–397. 19. Laurent López, “Avant les gaz lacrymogènes: les liaisons dangereuses du maintien de l’ordre, de la police politique et de la police judiciaire en France durant la Troisième République”, Déviance et Société, Vol. 32, No. 1, 2008, pp. 89–100. 20. Jean-Louis Robert, Les ouvriers, la Patrie et la Révolution, pp. 361–366. 21. This took place in October 1909 during a demonstration against the execution of the Spanish anarchist and education theorist Francisco Ferrer. 22. Such was the case for the perpetrator of the first homicide, a former highly decorated soldier having fought at the Chemin-des-Dames, see Jean-Paul Brunet, Jacques Doriot, du communisme au fascisme, Paris: Balland, 1986, pp. 65–67. 23.  Cf. Nicolas Hatzfeld, “Les morts de Flins et Sochaux: de la grève à la violence politique”, in Philippe Artières and Michelle ZancariniFournel (eds.), 68 une histoire collective, Paris: La Découverte, 2008, pp. 322–326. 24. Georges L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers, Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars, New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. 25. Concerning the attitude of the various law and order maintenance forces during the February 1934 riots and later during bloodstained demonstrations of the 1950s and 1960s (e.g., 14 July 1953; 17 October 1961; 8 February 1962), see Christian Chevandier, Policiers dans la ville. Une histoire des gardiens de la paix, Paris: Gallimard, 2012, pp. 682–719. For



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gendarmes in particular, see Yann Galera, La Garde républicaine mobile à l’épreuve du 6 février 1934, Maisons-Alfort: SHGN-Phénix éd., 2003. 26. Emmanuelle Cronier, Permissionnaires dans la Grande Guerre, p. 185. 27.  Jean-Marc Berlière, “Du maintien de l’ordre républicain au maintien républicain de l’ordre, réflexions sur la violence”, Genèses, No. 12, May 1993, pp. 6–29. 28. Though available before WWII, chlorobenzylidene malononitrile (aka CS gas) would not be used in France until the 1960s. 29. Éric Kocher-Marboeuf, “Le maintien de l’ordre public lors des grèves de 1947”, in Serge Berstein and Pierre Milza (eds.), L’année 1947, Paris: PFNSP, 1999, p. 382. 30. Yves Cohen, Le Siècle des chefs. Une histoire transnationale du commandement et de l’autorité (1890–1940), Paris: Éditions Amsterdam, 2013, p. 253. 31. Edmond Locard, La police: ce qu’elle est, ce qu’elle devrait être, Paris: Payot, 1919, p. 42. 32. Antoine Prost, Les Anciens combattants et la société française, Vol. III, Paris: Presses de la FNSP, 1977. 33.  Such lasting memories may explain—considering but one example— the attitude of mayors during the crisis of May–June 1968. See Bruno Benoît, Christian Chevandier, Gilles Morin, Gilles Richard and Gilles Vergnon (eds.), A chacun son Mai? Le tour de France de mai-juin 1968, Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2011. 34. Christian Chevandier, Été 44. L’insurrection des policiers parisiens, Paris: Vendémiaire, 2014. 35. Respectively 15 out of 60 and 19 out of 132. 36. Manon Pignot, Allons enfants de la patrie. Génération Grande Guerre, Paris: Seuil, 2012, pp. 220–268. 37. Luc Rudolph, Policiers rebelles. Une Résistance oubliée: la Police parisienne, Paris: Editions SPE, 2014, p. 46. 38. See Jean-Louis Robert and Jay Winter (eds.), Capital Cities in War. Paris, London, Berlin 1914–1919, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

CHAPTER 23

Conclusion: Living and Seeing the War Without Immediate Experience Jonas Campion and Laurent López

I have the honour to inform you that the morale of the population is generally satisfactory; no [outside] influence seems to have conditioned daily living, which goes on untroubled in our city.1

Such was the valuable testimony offered in the late winter of 1917–1918 by the Commissaire central (local police commissioner) of Orleans, a city lying some 60 miles to the south of Paris and mostly immune to the direct effects of war—although truly taking part in spite of its remote position from the front line.2 As witnessed in previous local police reports, the city had rapidly transformed owing to its role as a main hub for the transport of troops, POWs, the war wounded and refugees. While police records allow for the identification of various nationalities

J. Campion (*)  Institute of Historical Research of Septentrion (UMR CNRS 8529), Lille University, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, France e-mail: [email protected] L. López  Defense Historical Service, Vincennes, France e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3_23

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and for an assessment of the impact of such newcomers to town, they do not provide an objective overview of their behaviour, since contents are mostly focused on occasional breaches of the peace on the part of military men, including soldiers desperate not to return to the front, sometimes committing or attempting suicide. However remote, the city could feel the presence of war from successive air raid alerts, in particular when Zeppelins flew overhead. Yet rationing was the most tangible consequence felt by the population. Local police officers often filed reports on shopkeepers failing to comply with strict regulations governing the sale of staple products like bread and meat. This context also had positive effects, since the war effort created more employment in Orleans: jobs at various factories for ammunitions (artillery shells), uniforms, tobacco and automobiles—all served orders for the army and increased their staff numbers. Detailed police reports on strikes or union meetings in these factories give us an idea of the standard of living of workers and their working conditions. Such reports also indicate the extent of employment of women in this changing wartime society. Mentioned in such reports or in relation to searches for deserters hiding in Orleans and its outskirts, a number of Gendarmerie officers tend to crop up, revealing the existing cooperation between the two forces. This specific local example summarises the abundant potential of an historical approach to the First World War as seen through the eyes of law enforcement forces. This approach is specialised but provides undeniable “visual acuity” for grasping the diversity of perspectives of societies at war, whatever their remoteness or proximity to the front. We trust the contributions gathered in this book have therefore demonstrated the fertile nature of research leads opened by analysis, the initial intention of which was to widen geographical and chronological perspectives, as well as standard categories commonly accepted by researchers exploring the war and all matters concerning police and Gendarmerie forces. These contributions provide material considering a worldwide approach, describing the European sphere in the framework of its relationship with other continents; our collection thus paves the way for comparative studies of the configurations of law enforcement forces operating within their respective wartime societies; it offers a transversal rethink of standard conceptual pairs, such as centre versus periphery, front versus rear, town versus country or peacetime versus wartime, by highlighting their mutual permeability; it also suggests new meeting points

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and sources of interactions between forces. Last but not least, these studies provide new angles from which to observe the practices of order and their national characteristics in accordance with the specific functional or professional issues at stake in each individual state under scrutiny.

Timeline Discrepancies Between Police and Military Action The multiple approaches adopted here create a series of landmarks extending the commonly accepted chronology of the conflict. The traditional historical narrative sets the start of police and Gendarmerie involvement in the war in the summer of 1914; however, the essential part played by law enforcement forces after mobilisation per se must be extended to include their action in the preparation of the impending conflict through a number of previous years. Louis-Napoléon Panel thus highlights in his comparative study of the French, Belgian and Italian Gendarmeries the enduring advantages of a police force with military status to maintain ties between civilian populations and military society, in particular during transition periods at the outbreak and in the aftermath of war. Conversely, Clive Emsley details the necessity of creating, from solely civilian recruits, a military police force specifically devoted to the armies of the United Kingdom. Whether civilian or military, policing institutions represented key assets in the adaptation to war of all societies in which they operated, ensuring their on-going protection via decisive contributions to the control of foreigners3 or counter-intelligence.4 The period of hostilities is then used to portray the action of law enforcement officers both at the rear and the front. As revealed, at least in the French case that is, police and Gendarmerie officers did not enter the war with the same cast of mind. While gendarmes understood military duties as naturally warranted by their status, civilian police officers— officially termed Gardiens de la paix in Paris and several other cities (“keepers of the public peace” but also “peacekeepers”)—took quite a different view, since their involvement in warfare, even outside combat, seemed to contradict their very name. Finally, the multi-faceted action of Gendarmerie and police officers in the aftermath of the war is widely explored. Monitoring the demobilisation of troops; building or re-building states, as highlighted in Georges Philippot’s study of France’s action at the beginning of the Interwar Years to make its recovered eastern provinces truly French

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again; and regulating new forms of criminal activity, these officers played a defining part in this transition period when the need to restore order was sometimes even greater than during the conflict itself. By focusing his attention on French Gendarmerie timelines, Romain Pécout underlines the necessity of calling into question dates commonly accepted to mark the end of the First World War, since wartime conditions, in many ways, did not really cease until 1921. Living through these uncertain times, agents of order themselves had to adapt to a new position within societies, progressively returning to their old peacetime uniforms of “yesterday’s world” while having to realise the general cut had been, so to speak, re-tailored. In the meantime, and contrary to expectations in view of revolutionary events, Jonathan Daly’s study demonstrates that the organisation and methods of the Russian police, as it existed under the Czar, were consolidated rather than radically transformed under Soviet rule. Beyond this reviewed chronology giving prominence to mid-term duration, one must also take a different approach to the temporal dimension of law enforcement forces at war: what timely influence did the conflict exert over the transformation of policing structures and practices? In other words, one must consider the war as a privileged, although perhaps not truly exceptional, point of observation to understand the processes of change at work within the institutions of order. “Policing time”, if one may allow for this phrase since “policing space”5 has already demonstrated its relevance, is therefore connected and even comingled with military, political or social events. This approach proves to be admissible in terms of structures, values and sociological profiles but also in terms of equipment, territorial implantation or even budgets affected to policing institutions. Between the pre- and post-war moments, non-linear changes thus come to light and the multiplicity of fits and starts, by-passes and backtrack moves becomes far more obvious.

Policing Scales and Standards: Permeable Borders and Blurred Limits of Action Between Front and Rear The approach offered in this book reassesses traditional geographical divisions and areas. From the outset, Europe is connected with its colonies and dominions, which underlines the respective specificities of metropolitan countries and their overseas territories in matters of internal security. This inclusion of non-metropolitan spaces reflects the

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recent growing interest for studies focused on colonial police forces in European historiographies6; it allows for a questioning of the notion of distance to the main area of conflict in order to understand its furthest impact—even beyond the oceans. Joan Beaumont thus reminds us that Australian losses were proportionally severe and that the war fostered a strengthening of social control by law enforcement forces all across Australia, something equally highlighted by Richard Hill regarding New Zealand with, in this latter case, a blend of coercion and persuasion lasting beyond the war and resulting in a similar strengthening of surveillance over insular society. Yet Europe itself is also reassessed since contributions study both “great” as well as “small” states—the word “nation” being debatable regarding Belgium, Luxemburg or Switzerland—and provide specific treatment for neutral or occupied countries. Indeed, belligerent countries were not the only ones where civilian and military law enforcement forces were put on a war footing: such forces in Switzerland or Luxemburg, to quote only two examples among the countries studied in this book, were also subjected to the same exceptional context.7 Christophe Vuilleumier thus portrays Switzerland as the epicentre of European espionage owing to its neutrality turning into a factor of low-intensity warfare—to use an anachronistic phrase yet fully suited to describe what went on in this country at the crossroads of belligerent territories. However unwilling, the Swiss Confederation was compelled to adapt its law enforcement institutions by strengthening the ties between the various cantonal forces, thus paving the way for the creation of a federal state police force some 20 years later. In this regard, the Swiss Gendarmerie, as analysed by Philippe Hebeisen, acted as a prototype whose necessity only came to be accepted later in the mid1930s with the influx of refugees typical of the period. A similar effect is signalled by Gérald Arboit for Luxemburg via the rise of a national administration fostering unity among populations with diverse cultural backgrounds. Relying on fine-grained analysis to explore such spaces, further contributions use the policing “sieve” to refine symptomatic wartime notions such as “front” and “rear”, “occupied” or “liberated” areas, “centres” and “peripheries”. Among other things, this close examination reveals that the rear may begin only a few miles behind the trenches but extends as far as overseas horizons—as remote as possible from European front lines. Reaching beyond a mere comparative history of law enforcement

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forces at war, the present work offers a global-scale connected history of Gendarmerie and police forces. In light of its findings, it now seems possible to establish links between such forces in spite of geographical distances, institutional disparities, variable experiences of war or, indeed, their belonging to antagonistic sides.

Rebuilding Law Enforcement Forces in the Various Aftermaths of War As a permanent reality, the adaptation of policing to war—or maybe essentially in reaction to war—was also a transnational phenomenon. Consequently, a comparative approach is primordial not only owing to the First World War having imposed similar operational conditions to all societies among European belligerent nations and, to a certain extent, neutral ones, but also because it proves indispensable to account for similarities between the various policing systems resulting from “circulations” having led institutions, at least from the nineteenth century onwards, to mutual observation, hybridisation or cross-influence.8 In a European perspective, a wider approach destined to establish transnational characteristics may only reach its goal by preserving singularities remaining between countries and within them. Examples of such particularities are many and can be originated in both traditions and practical and ideological factors regarding “who must do” and “what must be done” in any law enforcement force. Following this approach, it becomes possible to return to another mode of analysis for the general issues of order surrounding the First World War—that of final results. If one agrees with Georges-Henry Soutou’s conclusion that the First World War did create a seminal turning point in the evolution of order in Europe via the emergence of an unprecedented system of collective security,9 one must also examine the parallel question of whether or not European law enforcement in the aftermath of war was wholly different from what it was in the summer of 1914. Beyond the active part taken in combat by European police and Gendarmerie officers (sometimes ex officio—as was the case for Italian carabinieri whose essential contribution to the birth of a military air force is narrated by Flavio Carbone—or individually as for many French gendarmes), one must also determine to what extent the so-called “forces of law and order” took part in disturbances, protests (for instance with

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the police officers’ strike in the United Kingdom) or even mass crimes, like the Armenian genocide, of this often ruthless period. The experience of war must also bring us to reassess policing action and policing staff. With the end of the conflict, the rise of veterans’ unions compelled law enforcement forces to acquire a new perception of demonstrators as no longer merely socialist revolutionaries or small groups challenging the existing political system. The patriotic aura of such unions, but also a sharing of the same wartime experience, led police and Gendarmerie officers to at times adopt an ambivalent attitude towards them.10 Likewise, the public image of law enforcement forces, particularly gendarmes, who had incarnated duress and state violence against combatants, became discredited or even rejected. Examples abound, not only in France where, as shown by Stéphane Le Bras, veterans nurtured a resentment probably fed by memories of military men having repressed drunkenness among fellow soldiers while the army actually encouraged it, but also in Yugoslavia where, as noticed by Stanislav Sretenović, the part played by the Serbian Gendarmerie was later played down or ignored. In Greece, gendarmes having been captured en masse during the war were also largely despised in the aftermath of war, with lasting negative consequences affecting the relationship between the institution and the population. Reading the contributions gathered in this book, the conflict appears to represent at the same time—though depending on particular instances— a locus of policing experimentation, a specific momentum and a relative continuum. Such was the case in the French département of Illeet-Vilaine where Jean-François Tanguy describes—by revealing the active part played by women in municipal police forces—a short-lived experiment, the effects of which nonetheless had a definite socio-­ professional impact in later years. Understanding the greater impact of war thus becomes possible in light of the changes affecting the organisation of policing. Using this prism of evolutionary changes on the level of Belgium’s entire policing system, Jonas Campion offers an interpretation of the transformations of the Belgian state and of its underlying nationalistic tensions. Without challenging the conceptual limits of what is a policing “model” or “system”, defining who exactly was in charge of preventive and repressive functions at the end of hostilities thus becomes necessary; more importantly perhaps, one must seek for a clear determination—compared with what it was before 1914—of the articulation of

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competence remits between the various corps and institutions. In this perspective, the policing landscape of the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg, as Gerhard Wiechmann and Guillaume Payen demonstrate, was fully redrawn. While only a statutory Gendarmerie and a civilian regional police force initially existed, policing actors during and after the war multiplied in nature, employing either civilian or military staff, and changed in terms of their relations to supervisory authorities of many kinds (armies, municipalities or duchy administrations). To what extent did the war, via contacts between allies or between occupying forces and the local population, foster policing circulations? How precisely did the war accelerate, or actually decelerate, trends already at work before it broke out? Gérald Sawicki thus highlights the continuum factors between the Nazi police apparatus and the secret field police created under the Kaiser, and Christian Chevandier investigates the subtle traces left by the First World War in the collective memory of Paris’ Gardiens de la Paix until the days of German occupation. Final conclusions of our collection therefore confirm on the one side, as was to be expected, the essential diversity of policing activities surrounding the First World War; competences involved covered the broadest possible range, that is, from the monitoring of food supplies to the circulation of goods and individuals; from the fight against crime, public drunkenness and prostitution to participation in military operations. On the other side, these contributions confirm the necessity to be open minded when studying what war is, and what war means, for police institutions. As we have demonstrated, new stimulating perspectives about police and World War One are opened by crossing geographical and chronological scales.

Notes

1. Archives municipales d’Orléans, 1 J 24, Report on the state of the local population from the Commissaire central to the Mayor (also a member of the French Chamber of Deputies), 1 March 1918. 2. As demonstrated by the remarkable online dossier—the main observations of which are hereby taken up—published by the city of Orleans on the occasion of the First World War centenary and available at http://archives.orleans-metropole.fr/r/75/centenaire-de-la-premiere-guerre-mondiale (19 February 2019).

23  CONCLUSION: LIVING AND SEEING THE WAR WITHOUT … 











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3. See Franck Caestecker, Alien Policy in Belgium, 1840–1940: The Creation of Guest Workers, Refugees and Illegal Aliens, New York: Berghan, 2000. 4. See Laurent Lόpez, “‘Quand nous serons à mille, nous ferons une croix’. Le contre-espionnage, un nouveau terrain de coopération entre gendarmes et policiers à la fin du XIXe siècle (1870–1914)”, Histoire, économie & société, No. 4, 2013, pp. 20–30. 5. Catherine Denys and Vincent Milliot (eds.), Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, “Espaces policiers, XVIIe–XXe siècles”, Vol. 50, No. 1, January–March 2003. 6. Regarding territorial policing in German South-West Africa, one must also mention Sven Schepp, Unter dem Kreuz des Südens: auf Spuren der Kaiserlichen Landespolizei von Deutsch-Südwestafrika, Frankfurt am Main: Verlag für Polizeiwissenschaft, 2009; for the French empire, see JeanPierre Bat and Nicolas Courtin (eds.), Maintenir l’ordre colonial: Afrique et Madagascar (XIXe–XXe siècles), Rennes, Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012, and contributions dealing with this perspective in Vincent Denis and Catherine Denys (eds.), Polices d’Empires: XVIIIe–XIXe siècles, Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2012; for the British sphere, see Michael Brodgen and Graham Ellison, Policing in an Age of Austerity: A Postcolonial Perspective, Oxon: Routledge, 2013. 7. The case of the Netherlands may also be worthy of mention—as widely explored in Cyrille Fijnaut’s De geschiedenis van de Nederlandse politie. Een staatsinstelling in de maalstroom van de geschiedenis, Amsterdam: Boom, 2007. 8.  See Catherine Denys (ed.), Circulations policières 1750–1914, Lille: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2012; Arnaud-Dominique Houte and Jean-Noël Luc (eds.), Les gendarmeries dans le monde (XIXe–XXIe siècles), Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2016, and Clive Emsley and Barbara Weinberger (eds.), Policing Western Europe: Politics, Professionalism and Public Order 1850–1940, New York: Greenwood Press, 1991. 9. Georges-Henry Soutou, “La Première Guerre mondiale: une rupture dans l’évolution de l’ordre européen”, Politique étrangère, Nos. 3–4, 2000, pp. 841–853. 10. Chris Millington, From Victory to Vichy: Veterans in Interwar France, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012; Id., “Street-Fighting Men: Political Violence in Inter-war France”, The English Historical Review, Vol. 129, No. 538, 2014, pp. 606–638. See also Martin Schoups and Toon Vrints, De overlevende. De Belgische oud-strijders tijdens het interbellum, Antwerpen: Polis, 2018.

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© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3

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Index

A Alapetite, Gabriel, 309, 310, 321 Albert I (king), 38 Allan, Richard, 236 Allard, Jules (captain), 55, 63 Anstey, Frank, 218 Apis, Dragutin Dimitrijević (colonel), 178 Artuso, Demetrio, 69, 72 Atkins, Tommy, 18 B Baggiani, Antonio, 69, 73 Baldi, Giulio, 69, 72 Barbusse, Henri, 51 Bardamu, Ferdinand, 1 Barthas, Louis, 45, 46, 49, 57 Baucq, Philippe, 88 Bauduy (corporal), 295 Bauer, Maximilian (GFP Director), 77–82, 84, 86

Bécassine, 110 Beck, Joseph (captain), 144, 145, 150, 151, 154 Berger, Paul, 81 Berruyer, Maurice (sergeant), 49 Bertoni, Louis, 184 Boell, Ludwig, 244, 252 Bonnet, Georges, 311 Bonnot, Jules, 327 Bontemps, Adolphe (captain), 43 Botha, Louis (general), 249 Bouchez (general), 308 Bouko (gendarme), 40 Brosse (captain), 40 Bury, Henry (corporal), 50 C Cabruna, Ernesto (lieutenant), 67–69, 72 Cacaud, Henri, 321 Cadorna, Luigi (marshal), xi

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG, part of Springer Nature 2019 J. Campion et al. (eds.), European Police Forces and Law Enforcement in the First World War, World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26102-3

367

368  Index Carreau, Geroges (mayor of Vitré), 115 Cavell, Edith, 88 Céline, Louis-Ferdinand, 1 Chapron (Prefect), 304 Chapuis, Félix (major), 51, 52 Chatzopoulos, Ioannis (commander-in-chief), 91–93 Chevalier (madam), 111 Chrissoulis, Pantelis (captain), 96 Clemenceau, Georges, 12, 116, 293, 302 Clithero, Ernest, 28 Collinson, Harold, 20, 21 Comazzi, Annibale, 69 Constantine (King), 90, 94, 99 Count de Rougé (mayor of Trémeven), 116 Cullen, John, 230, 233, 236, 240 D de Boursy, Pierre (gendarme), 150 Degiorgis, Emilio (general), 35 Delamare, Nicolas, 115 Dellezay, Pierre (captain), 37, 43 de Mandrot (colonel), 196, 206 de Strecker (general pasha), 187 Destrée, Jules, 290 Dorgelès, Roland, 48, 60, 298, 304 Dubois (captain), 37 Duval-Arnould, Paul, 48, 49 Dzerzhinskii, Felix E., 264 E Egli, Karl (colonel), 191 Elisabeth of Bavaria (Empress of Austria), 184 Emanuele Filiberto of Savoy (duke of Aosta), 66 Enneking (MP), 129, 130

Étévé, Marcel (lieutenant), 51 Eyre, Hal, 217 Eyschen, Paul (Prime Minister), 150, 153, 154 F Farulla, Egidio Luigi, 73 Feigel (MP), 129 Ferrer, Francisco, 334 Ferron, Eugène (first lieutenant), 144, 145 Fischer, Eduard (colonel), 160, 166 Fischer (lieutenant), 196 Fischer, Louis-Othon (superintendent), 84 Foch, Ferdinand (general), 36 Forestier, Ignace-Émile (lieutenant), 6 Fosdick, Raymond B., 139 Foxell, John, 25 Franchet d’Espérey, Louis (general), 53, 54 Franck, Michel, 144, 151 Franke, Victor (lieutenant-colonel), 249 Frank (first lieutenant), 145 Fraser, Peter, 232 Frémault (captain), 40 Friedrich August (Grand Duke), 127, 128 G Gabelli, Egisto (brigadier), 69 Galles, Nicholas (gendarme), 150 Gallieni, Joseph (General), 53 Gallienne, Alphonse, 49 Gambelli, Egisto, 73 Garnier, Marie-Louise, 82 Garran, Robert (Solicitor General), 217, 220

Index

Garreau, Georges (mayor of Vitré), 112, 115, 118 Genevoix, Maurice, 60 Globachev, K.I., 261 Grévillot (inspector), 82 Groppengiesser (Superintendent), 78 Guénard, Aurèle, 81 H Hari, Mata, 189, 193 Haupert, Joseph, 85 Haupert, Jules, 78 Heckmann, Pierre (captain), 145, 149–152, 154 Heimkehr, 77 Himmel (captain), 81 Hirschauer (senator), 312, 321 Holland, Harry, 232, 240 Horn (Superintendent), 81 Hudelo, Louis (Prefect of Police), 323 Hughes, William Morris (Billy), 212, 217, 218, 220, 221, 225 Hug, Paul (MP), 130 Humbert, Louis (general), 52 J Jacquemin, Paulin, 82 Jeanbernat, Jules (captain), 49, 61 Joffre, Joseph (general), 53 Joffre, Joseph (marshal), 5 Jost (lieutenant-colonel), 199 K Kandilákes, Stylianos (officer), 91, 92 Kandylákes, Stylianos (officer), 98–101 Karadjordjević, Peter I (King), 172 Kauffman, 151, 152, 154 Kaufmann (captain), 85

  369

Kellner, Rudolf (colonel), 122, 127–129, 131, 132, 135 Kenana, Rua, 233 Kleist (baron), 189 Komissarov, M.S., 263 Krebs, Emile, 81 Kropotkine, Pierre, 184 Kugener, Joseph (gendarme), 145, 146 L Lafon, Alexandre, 48 Laguiche (major general), 293, 302 Lambert (Provost), 55 Latsis, Martin, 265 Laurent, Emile (Prefect of Police), 323 Lebert, André, 60 Leclerc (general), 329 Lemée (superintendant), 87 Lenin, Vladimir Ilitch, 184, 263, 264, 269, 270 Lépine, Louis (Prefect of Police), 328 Leprince (municipal councillor), 109 Locard, Edmond (Dr), 331, 335 Longfils, 77 Ludendorff, Eric (general), 93 Lux (captain), 81 M Malvy, Louis (Ministry of Interior), 323 Marie-Adélaïde (Grand-Duchess), 144, 151 Marini, Giuseppe (sergeant), 69 Martynov, A.P., 261 Maunoury, Henry, 6 McKechnie, E.A. (major), xi, xiv Michel, Albert (colonel), 307–322 Millerand, Alexandre, 309, 310 Moizo, Riccardo (captain), 66

370  Index Monnier, Luigi (lieutenant), 69, 70 Moreau (major), 34 Moser, Fritz, 185, 186 Müller, Auguste, 78, 85 Munro Ferguson, Ronald Crauford, 220, 221 Mussolini, Benito, 41 Muthmann, Charles, 84 N Napoléon, Bonaparte, 18, 34, 36, 42, 71, 134, 324 Napoléon, Joseph (King of Naples), 42 Nicholas II (Emperor), 264 Nickels, Jean (brigadier), 150 Nicolai (major), 76, 78, 83, 86–88 Novaković, Stojan, 171, 172, 179 O Obrenović, Alexander (King), 172 Obrenović, Milan (King), 171 Obst, Otto, 78 O’Donovan, John, 229 P Pams, Jules (Ministry of Interior), 323 Papadakis, Ioannis (captain), 90, 92–95, 98–100 Patterson, John, 21 Peel, Robert, 17 Pérochon, Ernest, 110 Pétain, Philippe (general), 54 Peters, Nicolas (gendarme), 145 Petit, Gabrielle, 88 Pinault (madam), 111 Poncey, Arsène (brigadier), 332 Poutous, Jean-Pierre, 51 Puzu, Giuseppe (sergeant major), 69

R Raux, Fernand (Prefect of Police), 323 Reiser, 185 Reiss, Rodolphe Archibald, 190 Reuter, Emile, 151 Reuter, Nicolas (gendarme), 148 Rischard, Lise, 84 Robinet (mister), 114 Rossignol (doctor), 113 Rouget de Lisle, 326 Royer (chasseur), 58 Royer (Gendarmerie officer), 56 Ryan, T.J., 220, 221 S Saddik, Youssouf (pasha), 188 Schalf, 77 Scheer (minister), 129, 130 Schnee, Heinrich, 245, 253 Schreck, Hans, 188, 189 Schwartz, Paoli, 81 Sébille, Jules, 5 Seitz (Dr), 249 Shreck, Hans, 189 Steeg, Jules (Ministry of Interior), 323 Stefanović, Dušan P. (colonel), 180 Stein, Maurice (lieutenant), 145 Steinmetz (commissaire), 78, 85, 88 Steward, George (major), 219, 220 Stockton, William, 20, 21 Stolle (teacher), 128 Svoboda, Raymond-Albert, 188 T Thatcher, Margaret, 189 Thill (gendarme), 40 Thilo, Émile (captain), 208 Thinnes, Jean-Pierre Jérôme (deputy), 150

Index

Thorn, Victor (Prime Minister), 150, 154 Trochu (priest), 116 Tuohy, Ferdinand (captain), xii, xv U Uritskii, M.S., 264 V Vandervelde, Émile, 283, 284 Van Dyck, Emile (major), 144, 148, 154 Vautier, Frédéric (general), 53 Venizelos, Eleftherios, 89, 90, 97, 99, 101 Vérand, Charles (general), 35 Victor Emmanuel I of Savoy (King), 65 von Below, Fritz (general), 79 von Doering, Hans Georg (major), 250 von Falkenhausen, Ludwig (general), 78 von Gerlach, Helmut, 124

  371

von Lettow-Vorbeck, Paul (colonel), 251 von Nassau, Adolf (Grand-Duke), 144 von Schwarzkoppen, Maximilian, 77 von Schweinitz (major), 91, 92 von Wattenwyl, Friedrich Moritz (colonel), 191 von Waume, Baroness, 187 Vukasović, Janko (colonel), 173 W Waegelé, Henri (superintendent), 84, 85, 88 Waldbillig, Nicolas (gendarme), 151, 152 Waldé, Paul, 188 Walmsley, James, 21, 31 Wellington, Arthur (Duke of), 18 Wempe, Johann Gerhard, 135 Whitlam, Goufh (Prime minister), 226 Wilhelm II (Kaiser), 77, 85, 189 Wille, Ulrich (general), 198, 200, 207, 208, 210 Wilwers, Michel, 150 Wolter (Superintendent), 77